)rnia 
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1 1' 

hi. 


'Books  by  Grander  {Matthews : 

Essays  and  Criticisms 
French  Dramatists  of  the  19th  Century 
Pen  and  Ink,  Essays  on  subjects  of  more 

or  less  importance 
Aspects  of  Fiction,  and  Other  Essays 
The  Historical  Novel,  and  Other  Essays 
Essays  on  English  (in  press) 


THE  HISTORICAL  NOVEL 

AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 


THE 

HISTORICAL  NOVEL 

AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 


BY 

BRANDER  MATTHEWS 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

1901 


Copyright,  1901,  by 
Brander  Matthews 


o 


o 


• 


TO 

to 

S  MARK  TWAIN 


IN  TESTIMONY   OF  MY   REGARD   FOR  THE  MAN 

AND   OF   MY    RESPECT   FOR  THE 

LITERARY   ARTIST 


rw  %J  «.y  <J  <^^a/r^ 


?. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


I  The  Historical  Novel 3 

\\  Romance  against  Romanticism  ' .     .     .     31 

III  New  Trials  for  Old  Favorites     ...     49 

IV  The  Study  of  Fiction^ 75 

V  Alphonse  Daudet  ^ 109 

VI  On  a  Novel  of  Thackeray s    .     .     .     .149 

VII  H.  C.  Bunner 165 

VIII  Literature  as  a  Prof ession  t  ....  193 
WX   The  Relation  of  the  Drama  to  Literature  21']' 

1^   The  Conventions  of  the  Drama    .     .     .241 

*/X\  A  Critic  of  the  Acted  Drama:  William. 

Archer 2\ 

XII   The  Art  and  Mystery  of  Collaboration .  295 


I 

THE  HISTORICAL  NOVEL 


THE   HISTORICAL  NOVEL 

WHEN  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  wrote  his 
'Note  on  Realism,'  and  declared  that 
"the  historical  novel  is  dead,"  he  did  not  think 
he  would  live  to  be  the  author  of  the  '  Master 
of  Ballantrae.'  But  when  Prosper  Merimee  ex- 
pressed to  a  correspondent  his  belief  that  the 
historical  novel  was  a  "bastard  form,"  he  could 
look  back  without  reproach  upon  his  own 
'Chronique  de  Charles  IX'  —  one  of  the  finest 
examples  of  the  kind  of  fiction  he  chose  to  de- 
spise. Whether  or  not  most  readers  of  English 
fiction  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  ap- 
prove Merimee's  opinion  that  the  historical  novel 
is  illegitimate  by  birth,  few  of  them  will  agree 
with  Stevenson  in  deeming  it  defunct.  If  we 
can  judge  by  the  welcome  it  receives  from  the 
writers  of  newspaper  notices,  it  is  not  moribund 
even;  and  if  we  are  influenced  by  the  immense 
sale  of  'Ben-Hur'  and  by  the  broadening  vogue 
of  'Quo  Vadis,'  we  may  go  so  far  as  to  believe 
that  it  was  never  stronger  or  fuller  of  life. 

3 


THE   HISTORICAL   NOVEL 

We  might  even  suggest  that  the  liking  for  his- 
torical fiction  is  now  so  keen  that  the  public  is 
not  at  all  particular  as  to  the  veracity  of  the  his- 
tory out  of  which  the  fiction  has  been  manufac- 
tured, since  it  accepts  the  invented  facts  of  the 
Chronicles  of  Zenda  quite  as  eagerly  as  it  re- 
ceives the  better-documented  'Memoirs  of  a  Min- 
ister of  France.' 

More  than  any  other  British  author  of  his  years, 
Stevenson  worked  in  accord  with  the  theories  of 
art  which  have  been  elaborated  and  expounded 
in  France;  and  it  may  be  that  when  he  declared 
the  historical  novel  to  be  dead  he  was  thinking 
rather  of  French  literature  than  of  English,  There 
is  no  doubt  that  in  France  the  historical  novel  is 
not  cherished.  No  one  of  the  living  masters  of 
fiction  in  France  has  attempted  any  but  contem- 
porary studies.  M.  Daudet,  M.  Zola,  M.  Bourget, 
tind  all  the  subjects  they  need  in  the  life  of  their 
own  times.  Flaubert's  fame  is  due  to  his  mas- 
terly 'Madame  Bovary,'  and  not  to  his  splendid 
'Salammbo.'  So  sharp  is  the  French  reaction 
against  Romanticism  that  even  impressionist 
critics  like  M.  Jules  Lemaitre  and  M.  Anatole 
France  do  not  overpraise  the  gay  romances  of 
the  elder  Dumas,  as  Stevenson  did.  In  France 
the  historical  novel  has  no  standing  in  the  court 
of  serious  criticism.  As  Merimee  wrote  in  the 
correspondence  from  which  one  quotation  has 

4 


THE   HISTORICAL   NOVEL 

already  been  made,  "History,  in  my  eyes,  is  a  C 
sacred  thing." 

Historical  fiction  suffers  in  France  from  the 
same  discredit  as  historical  painting,  and  for  the 
same  reasons.  It  is  either  too  easy  to  be  worth 
while  —  a  French  critic  might  say  —  or  so  diffi- 
cult as  to  be  impossible.  When  a  young  man 
once  went  to  Courbet  for  advice,  saying  that  his 
vocation  was  to  be  a  historical  painter,  the  artist 
promptly  responded:  "I  don't  doubt  it;  and 
therefore  begin  by  giving  three  months  to  mak- 
ing a  portrait  of  your  father!  " 

Perhaps  French  opinion  is  nowhere  more  ac- 
curately voiced  than  by  M.  Anatole  France  in 
the  'Jardin  d'Epicure'.:  "We  cannot  repro- 
duce with  any  accuracy  what  no  longer  exists. 
When  we  see  that  a  painter  has  to  take  all  the 
trouble  in  the  world  to  represent  to  us,  more  or 
less  exactly,  a  scene  in  the  time  of  Louis  Philippe, 
we  may  despair  of  his  ever  being  able  to  give  us 
the  slightest  idea  of  an  event  contemporary  with 
Saint  Louis  or  Augustus.  We  weary  ourselves 
copying  armor  and  old  chests;  but  the  artists  of 
the  past  did  not  worry  themselves  about  so  empty 
an  exactness.  They  lent  to  the  hero  of  legend  or 
history  the  costume  and  the  looks  of  their  own 
contemporaries;  and  thus  they  depicted  naturally 
their  own  soul  and  their  own  century.  Now 
what  can  an  artist  do  better?" 


THE   HISTORICAL   NOVEL 

In  Other  words,  Paul  Veronese's  '  Marriage  at 
Cana'  is  frankly  a  revelation  of  the  Italian  Rena- 
scence; and  this  revelation  is  not  contaminated 
by  any  fifteenth-century  guess  at  the  manners 
and  customs  of  Judea  in  the  first  century.  It  is 
difficult  to  surmise  how  some  of  the  laboriously 
archeological  pictures  of  the  nineteenth  century 
will  affect  an  observer  of  the  twenty-first  century. 
As  in  painting,  so  in  the  drama:  Shakspere 
made  no  effort  to  suggest  the  primitive  manners 
and  customs  of  Scotland  to  the  spectators  of  his 
'Macbeth';  and  if  the  characters  of  'Julius 
Csesar '  are  Roman,  it  is  chiefly  because  of  the 
local  color  that  chanced  to  leak  through  from 
North's  Plutarch.  What  Shakspere  aimed  at 
was  the  creation  of  living  men  and  women  — 
interesting  because  of  their  intense  humanity, 
eternal  because  of  their  truth  and  vitality.  He 
never  sought  to  differentiate  Scotchmen  and 
Danes  of  the  past  from  Englishmen  of  the  present. 
He  lent  to  all  his  personages  the  vocabulary,  the 
laws,  the  usages,  the  costumes  which  were 
familiar  to  the  playgoers  that  flocked  to  applaud 
his  pieces.  Archeology  was  unknown  to  him 
and  to  them ;  anachronism  did  not  affright  them 
or  him.  Probably  he  would  have  brushed  aside 
any  demand  for  exactness  of  fact  as  an  attempt 
to  impose  an  unfair  restraint  upon  the  liberty  of 
the  dramatist  —  whose  business  it  was  to  write 

6 


THE   HISTORICAL  NOVEL 

plays  to  be  acted  in  a  theater,  and  not  to  prepare 
lectures  to  be  delivered  in  a  college  hall.  Shak- 
spere  and  Veronese,  each  in  his  own  art,  worked 
freely,  as  though  wholly  unconscious  of  any  dif- 
ference between  their  own  contemporaries  and 
the  subjects  of  the  Caesars. 

The  compilers  of  the  '  Gesta  Romanorum  '  had 
no  conception  of  the  elements  of  either  geog- 
raphy or  chronology;  and  the  authors  of  the 
RlimaiK£S_DX_-Chivaky  seem  to  have  been  as 
ignorant,  although  their  scientific  nihilism  is  per- 
haps wilful  —  like  Stockton's  when  he  tells  us  a 
'Tale  of  Negative  Gravity.'  The  essential  like- 
ness of  the  Romances  of  Chivalry  to  the  Wa- 
verley  Novels  has  been  pointed  out  more  than 
once;  and  in  each  group  of  tales  we^ find  the 
heroy  or  the  technical  hero's  rescuing  friend,  om- 
nipresent, omniscient,  ~and"  almost  omnipotent. 
The  essential  difference  between  the  two  kinds 
of  fiction  is  quite  as  obvious  also :  it  lies  in  the  fact 
that  Scott  and.  his  followers  know  what  history 
is,  and  that  even  when  they  yary  from  It  they 
are  aware  of  what  they  are  doing. 

The  historical  novel,  as 'we  understand  it  to- 
day, like  the  historical  drama  and  like  historical 
painting,  could  not  come  into  being  until  after 
history  had  established  itself,  and  after  chronology 
and  geography  had  lent  to  history  their  indispen- 
sable aid.     Nowadays  the  novelist  and  the  drama- 

7 


THE   HISTORICAL   NOVEL 

tist  and  the  painter  are  conscious  that  people  do 
not  talk  and  dress  and  behave  as  they  did  a  hun- 
dred years  ago,  or  a  thousand.  They  do  not 
know  precisely  how  the  people  of  those  days 
\  did  feel  and  think  and  act:  they  cannot  know 
1  these  things.  The  most  they  can  do  is  to  study 
V^he  records  of  the  past  and  make  a  guess,  the 
success  of  which  depends  on  their  equipment 
and  insight.  They  accept  their  obligation  to 
history  and  to  its  handmaids  —  an  obligation 
which  Shakspere  and  Veronese  would  have  de- 
nied quite  as  frankly  as  the  compilers  of  the 
'  Gesta  Romanorum '  or  the  writers  of  the  Ro- 
mances of  Chivalry.  Scott  was  appealing  to  a 
circle  of  more  or  less  sophisticated  readers,  any 
one  of  whom  might  be  an  antiquary:  he  was  to 
be  tried  by  a  jury  of  his  peers.  But  the  author 
of  'Amadis  of  Gaul,'  for  example,  wrote  for  a 
public  that  cared  as  little  as  he  himself  did  about 
the  actual  facts  of  the  countries  or  of  the  periods 
his  hero  traversed  in  search  of  strange  adventure. 
Although  it  is  not  difficult  to  detect  here  and 
there  in  Scott's  predecessors  the  more  or  less 
fragmentary  hints  of  which  he  availed  himself,  it 
would  be  absurd  to  deny  that  Scott  is  really  the 
inventor  of  the  historical  novel,  just  as  Poe  was 
afterward  the  inventor  of  the  detective  story.  In 
the  'Castle  of  Otranto  '  Horace  Walpole  essayed 
to  recall  to  life  the  Gothic  period  as  he  under- 

8 


THE   HISTORICAL   NOVEL 

Stood  it ;  but  —  if  we  may  judge  by  Mrs.  Radcliffe 
and  the  rest  of  his  immediate  imitators  —  it  was 
the  tale  of  mystery  he  succeeded  in  writing  and 
not  the  true  historical  novel.  For  this  last,  Wal- 
pole  was  without  two  things  which  Scott  pos- 
sessed abundantly — the  gift  of  story-telling  and 
an  intimate  knowledge  of  more  than  one  epoch 
of  the  past. 

And  Scott  had  also  two  other  qualifications 
which  Walpole  lacked:  he  was  a  poet  and  he 
was  a  humorist.  As  it  happens,  the  steps  that 
led  Scott  to  the  Waverley  Novels  are  not  hard 
to  count.  He  began  by  collecting  the  ballads  of 
the  Border;  and  soon  he  wrote  new  ballads  in 
the  old  manner.  Then  he  linked  ballads  together, 
and  so  made  '  Marmion '  and  the  '  Lady  of  the 
Lake.'  When  he  thought  that  the  public  was 
weary  of  his  verse,  he  told  one  of  these  ballad 
tales  in  prose,  and  so  made  *  Waverley.'  But  he 
had  read  Miss  Edgeworth,  and  he  wished  to  do 
for  the  Scottish  peasant  what  she  had  done  for 
the  Irish :  thus  it  is  that  the  prose  tales  contained 
sketches  of  character  at  once  robust  and  delicate. 
in  time,  when  he  tired  of  Scotch  subjects,  he 
crossed  the  Border;  and  in  'Ivanhoe'  he  first 
applied  to  an  English  subject  the  formula  he  had 
invented  for  use  in  North  Britain,  helped  in  his 
handling  of  a  medieval  theme  by  his  recollections 
of  the  'Gotz  von  Berlichingen '  of  Goethe,  which 

9 


THE   HISTORICAL   NOVEL 

he  had  translated  in  his  prentice  days.  After  a 
while  he  crossed  the  Channel,  and  found  that  the 
method  acquired  in  telling  the  Scotch  stories  en- 
abled him  to  write  'Quentin  Durward,'  a  story 
of  France,  and  the  '  Talisman,'  a  story  of  Palestine. 
Although  he  had  to  forego  his  main  advantage 
when  he  left  his  native  land,  Scott  did  not  aban- 
don his  humor;  and  these  later  tales  contain 
more  than  one  memorable  character,  even  if  they 
reveal  none  so  unforgetable  as  are  a  dozen  or 
more  in  the  Scotch  stories. 

Probably  the  immense  vogue  of  the  Waverley 
Novels,  as  they  came  forth  swiftly  one  after  an- 
other in  the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, was  due  rather  to  the  qualities  they  had  in 
common  with  the  'Castle  of  Otranto'  than  to 
the  qualities  they  had  in  common  with  '  Castle 
Rackrent.'  No  doubt  it  was  the  union  of  the 
merits  of  both  schools  that  broadened  the  audi- 
ence to  which  the  Waverley  Novels  appealed; 
but,  in  attaining  his  contemporary  triumph,  Scott 
owed  more  to  Horace  Walpole  than  to  Maria 
Edgeworth.  He  surpassed  Walpole  immeasur- 
ably, because  he  was  a  man  of  deeper  knowledge 
and  broader  sympathy.  His  audience  was  far 
wider  than  Miss  Edgeworth's,  because  he  infused 
into  his  Scottish  tales  a  romantic  flavor  which 
she  carefully  excluded  from  her  veracious  por- 
trayals of  Irish  character. 

lO 


THE   HISTORICAL   NOVEL 

Yet  it  may  be  suggested  that  the  stories  of 
Scott  most  likely  to  survive  the  centenary  of  their 
publication  and  to  retain  readers  in  the  first  quar- 
ter of  the  twentieth  century  are  perhaps  those  in 
which  he  best  withstands  the  comparison  with 
Miss  Edgeworth  —  the  stories  in  which  he  has 
recorded  types  of  Scottish  character,  with  its 
mingled  humor  and  pathos.  For  mere  excite- 
ment our  liking  is  eternal:  but  the  fashion  thereof 
is  fickle;  and  we  prefer  our  romantic  adventures 
cut  this  way  to-day  and  another  way  to-morrow. 
Our  interest  in  our  fellow-man  subsists  unchanged 
forever,  and  we  take  a  perennial  delight  in  the 
revelation  of  the  subtleties  of  human  nature.  It 
is  in  the  '  Antiquary  '  and  in  the  '  Heart  of  Mid- 
lothian '  that  Scott  is  seen  at  his  best;  and  it  is 
by  creating  characters  like  Caleb  Balderstone  and 
Dugald  Dalgetty  and  Wandering  Willie  that  he 
has  deserved  to  endure. 

In  work  of  this  kind  Scott  showed  himself  a 
Realist.  He  revealed  himself  as  a  humorist  with 
a  compassionate  understanding  of  his  fellow-crea- 
tures. He  gave  play  to  that  sense  of  reality  which 
Bagehot  praises  as  one  of  the  most  valuable  of 
his  characteristics.  When  he  is  dealing  with  me- 
dieval life, —  which  he  knew  not  at  first  hand, 
as  he  knew  his  Scottish  peasants,  but  afar  off  from 
books, —  the  result  is  unreal.  He  was  as  well 
read  in  history  as  any  man  of  his  time;  and  he 

II 


THE   HISTORICAL   NOVEL 

himself  explained  his  superiority  over  the  host  of 
imitators  who  encompassed  him  about,  by  say- 
ing that  they  read  to  write,  while  he  wrote 
because  he  had  read.  But  this  knowledge  was 
second-hand,  at  best:  it  was  not  like  his  day-in- 
day-out  acquaintance  with  the  men  of  his  own 
time;  and  this  is  why  the  unreality  of  '  Ivanhoe,' 
for  instance,  is  becoming  more  and  more  obvious 
to  us.  The  breaking  of  the  lances  in  the  lists  of 
Ashby-de-la-Zouch  is  to  us  a  hollow  sham,  like 
the  polite  tournament  at  Eglinton.  The  deeds 
of  daring  of  Ivanhoe  and  of  the  Black  Knight  and 
of  Robin  Hood  still  appeal  to  the  boy  in  us;  but 
they  are  less  and  less  convincing  to  the  man. 

Although  Ivanhoe  and  Robin  Hood  and  the 
Black  Knight  are  boldly  projected  figures,  their 
psychology  is  summary.  How  could  it  be  any- 
thing else  ?  With  all  his  genius,  Scott  was  em- 
phatically a  man  of  his  own  time  and  of  his 
own  country,  with  the  limitations  and  the  preju- 
dices of  the  eighteenth  century  and  of  the  British 
Isles.  Few  of  his  warmest  admirers  would  ven- 
ture to  suggest  that  he  was  as  broad  in  sympathy 
as  Shakspere,  or  as  universal  in  his  vision;  and 
yet  he  was  trying  to  reconstruct  Jhe  past  for  us, 
in  deed. and  feeling  and  thought — the  very  thing 
that  Shakspere  never  attempted.  The  author  of 
*  Much  Ado  about  Nothing  '  and  of  the  '  Comedy 
of  Errors '  was  content  to  people  the  foreign  plots 

12 


THE   HISTORICAL   NOVEL 

he  borrowed  so  lightly  with  the  Elizabethans  he 
knew  so  well.  The  author  of  '  Ivanhoe  '  and  of 
the  '  Talisman  '  made  a  strenuous  effort  to  body 
forth  the  very  spirit  of  epochs  and  of  lands 
wholly  unlike  the  spirit  of  the  eighteenth  century 
in  the  British  Isles.  It  is  a  proof  of  Scott's  genius 
that  he  came  so  near  success;  but  failure  was 
inevitable.  "After  all,"  said  Taine,  "his  char- 
acters, to  whatever  age  he  transports  them,  are 
his  neighbors — canny  farmers,  vain  lairds,  gloved 
gentlemen,  young  marriageable  ladies,  all  more 
or  less  commonplace,  that  is,  well  ordered  by 
education  and  character,  hundreds  of  miles  away 
from  the  voluptuous  fools  of  the  Restoration  or 
the  heroic  brutes  and  forcible  beasts  of  the  Mid- 
dle Ages." 

The  fact  is  that  no  man  can  step  off  his  own 
shadow.  By  no  effort  of  the  will  can  he  thrust 
himself  backward  into  the  past  and  shed  his  share 
of  the  accumulations  of  the  ages,  of  all  the  myriad 
accretions  of  thought  and  sentiment  and  know- 
ledge, stored  up  in  the  centuries  that  lie  between 
him  and  the  time  he  is  trying  to  treat.  Of  ne- 
cessity he  puts  into  his  picture  of  days  gone  by 
more  or  less  of  the  days  in  which  he  is  living. 
Shakspere  frankly  accepted  the  situation:  Scott 
attempted  the  impossible.  Racine  wrote  trage- 
dies on  Greek  subjects;  and  he  submitted  to  be 
bound  by  rules  which  he  supposed  to  have  been 

'3 


THE   HISTORICAL   NOVEL 

laid  down  by  a  great  Greek  critic.  To  the  spec- 
tator who  saw  these  plays  when  they  were  first 
produced,  they  may  have  seemed  Greek;  but  to 
us,  two  hundred  years  later,  they  appear  to  be 
perhaps  the  most  typical  product  of  the  age  of 
Louis  XIV;  and  a  great  French  critic  has  sug- 
gested that  to  bring  out  their  full  flavor  they 
should  be  performed  nowadays  by  actors  wear- 
ing, not  the  flowing  draperies  of  Athens,  but  the 
elaborate  court-dress  of  Versailles.  '  Phedre '  is 
interesting  to  us  to-day,  not  because  it  is  Greek, 
but  because  it  is  French;  and  some  of  Scott's 
stories,  hailed  on  their  publication  as  faithful  re- 
productions of  medieval  manners,  will  doubtless 
have  another  interest,  in  time,  as  illustrations  of 
what  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century 
believed  the  Middle  Ages  to  be. 

Not  only  is  it  impossible  for  a  man  to  get  away 
from  his  own  country,  but  it  is  equally  impossi- 
ble for  him  to  get  away  from  his  own  nationality. 
How  rarely  has  an  author  been  able  to  create  a 
character  of  a  different  stock  from  his  own !  Cer- 
tainly most  of  the  great  figures  of  fiction  are  compa- 
triots of  their  makers.  We  have  had  many  carpet- 
bag novelists  of  late  —  men  and  women  who  go 
forth  gaily  and  study  a  foreign  country  from  the 
platform  of  a  parlor-car;  and  some  of  these  are 
able  to  spin  yarns  which  hold  the  attention  of 
listening   thousands.     What  the   people  of  the 

»4 


THE   HISTORICAL   NOVEL 

foreign  countries  think  of  these  superficial  tales 
we  can  measure  when  we  recall  the  contempt  in 
which  we  Americans  hold  the  efforts  made  by 
one  and  another  of  the  British  novelists  to  lay 
the  scene  of  a  story  here  in  the  United  States. 
Dickens  and  TroUope  and  Reade  were  men  of 
varied  gifts,  keen  observers  all  of  them;  but  how 
lamentable  the  spectacle  when  they  endeavored 
to  portray  an  American !  Probably  most  Ameri- 
can endeavors  to  portray  an  Englishman  are  quite 
as  foolish  in  the  eyes  of  the  British.  Dickens 
twice  chose  to  compete  with  the  carpet-bag  nov- 
elists ;  and  if  we  Americans  are  unwilling  to  see  a 
correct  picture  of  our  life  in  '  Martin  Chuzzlewit,' 
we  may  be  sure  that  the  French  are  as  unwilling 
to  acknowledge  the  'Tale  of  Two  Cities'  as  an 
accurate  portrayal  of  the  most  dramatic  epoch  in 
their  history.  There  are  those  who  think  it 
was  a  piece  of  impertinence  for  a  Londoner  like 
Dickens  to  suppose  that  he  could  escape  the  in- 
exorable limitations  of  his  birth  and  education 
and  hope  to  see  Americans  or  Frenchmen  as  they 
really  are;  finer  artists  than  Dickens  have  failed 
in  this  —  artists  of  a  far  more  exquisite  touch. 

The  masterpieces  of  the  great  painters  instantly 
declare  the  race  to  which  the  limner  himself  be- 
longed. Rubens  and  Velasquez  and  Titian  trav- 
eled and  saw  the  world;  they  have  left  us  por- 
traits of  men  of  many  nationalities :  and  yet  every 

15 


THE    HISTORICAL   NOVEL 

man  and  woman  Rubens  painted  seems  to  us 
Dutch ;  every  man  and  woman  Velasquez  painted 
seems  to  us  Spanish;  every  man  and  woman  Ti- 
tian painted  seems  to  us  Italian.  The  artists  of 
our  own  time,  for  all  their  cosmopolitanism,  are 
no  better  off;  and  when  M.  Bonnat  has  for  sitters 
Americans  of  marked  characteristics  he  cannot 
help  reproducing  them  on  canvas  as  though  they 
had  been  reflected  in  a  Gallic  mirror.  In  short,  a 
man  can  no  more  escape  from  his  race  than  he 
can  escape  from  his  century ;  it  is  the  misfortune 
of  the  historical  novelist  that  he  must  try  to  do 
both. 

The  'Atalanta  in  Calydon'  of  Mr.  Swinburne 
has  been  praised  as  the  most  Greek  of  all  modern 
attempts  to  reproduce  Greek  tragedy;  and  jt  may 
deserve  this  eulogy  —  but  what  of  it  ?  It  may 
be  the  most  Greek  of  the  modern  plays,  but  is  it 
really  Greek  after  all  ?  Would  not  an  ancient 
Greek  have  found  in  it  many  things  quite  incom- 
prehensible to  him  ?  Even  if  it  is  more  or  less 
Greek,  is  it  as  Greek  as  the  plays  the  Greeks 
themselves  wrote  ?  Why  should  an  Englishman 
pride  himself  on  having  written  a  Greek  play  ? 
At  best  he  has  but  accomplished  a  feat  of  main 
strength,  a  tour  de  force,  an  exercise  in  literary 
gymnastics!  A  pastiche,  a  paste  jewel,  is  not  a 
precious  possession.  A  Greek  play  written  by  a 
modern  Englishman  remains  absolutely  outside 

\6 


THE   HISTORICAL   NOVEL 

the  current  of  contemporary  literature.  It  is  a 
kind  of  thing  the  Greeks  never  dreamed  of  doing; 
they  wrote  Greek  plays  because  they  were  Greeks 
and  could  do  nothing  else;  they  did  not  imitate 
the  literature  of  the  Assyrians  nor  that  of  the 
Egyptians;  they  swam  in  the  full  center  of  the 
current  of  their  own  time.  If  Sophocles  were  a 
modern  Englishman,  who  can  doubt  that  he 
would  write  English  plays,  with  no  backward 
glance  toward  Greek  tragedy  ?  The  lucidity,  the 
sobriety,  the  elevation  of  the  Greeks  we  may 
borrow  from  them,  if  we  can,  without  taking 
over  also  the  mere  external  forms  due  to  the 
accidents  of  their  age. 

Art  has  difficulties  enough  without  imposing 
on  it  limitations  no  longer  needful.  Let  the 
dead  past  bury  its  dead.  This  has  been  the 
motto  of  every  great  artist,  ancient  and  modern, 
of  Dante,  of  Shakspere,  and  of  Moliere.  A  man 
who  has  work  to  do  in  the  world  does  not  em- 
barrass himself  by  using  a  dead  language  to  con- 
vey his  ideas.  Milton's  Latin  verse  may  be  as 
elegant  as  its  admirers  assert;  but  if  he  had 
written  nothing  else,  this  page  might  need  a 
foot-note  to  explain  who  he  was.  If  a  layman 
may  venture  an  opinion,  the  use  of  Gothic  archi- 
tecture in  America  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth 
century  seems  an  equivalent  anachronism.  Gothic 
is  a  dead  language;  and  no  man  to-day  in  the 


THE   HISTORICAL  NOVEL 

United  States  uses  it  naturally,  as  he  does  the 
vernacular.  One  of  the  most  accomplished  of 
American  architects  recently  drew  attention  to 
the  fact  that  "such  a  perfect  composition  and 
exquisite  design  as  M.  Vaudremer's  church  of 
Montrouge,  Paris,  unquestionably  the  best  and 
ablest  attempt  in  our  time  to  revive  medieval 
art,  is  considered  cold  even  by  his  own  pupils"; 
and  then  Mr.  Hastings  explains  that  "this  is  be- 
cause it  lacks  the  life  we  are  living,  and  at  the 
same  time  is  without  the  real  medieval  life." 
Gothic  was  at  its  finest  when  it  was  the  only 
architecture  that  was  known,  and  when  it  was 
used  naturally  and  handled  freely  and  uncon- 
sciously—  just  as  the  best  Greek  plays  were 
written  by  the  Greeks. 

In  other  words,  the  really  trustworthy  histori- 
cal novels  are  those  which  were  a-writing  while 
the  history  was  a-making.  If  the  'Tale  of  Two 
Cities  '  misrepresents  the  Paris  of  1789,  the  '  Pick- 
wick Papers '  represents  with  amazing  humor 
and  with  photographic  fidelity  certain  aspects 
of  the  London  of  1837.  The  one  gives  us  what 
Dickens  guessed  about  France  in  the  preceding 
century,  and  the  other  tells  us  what  he  saw  in 
England  in  his  own  time.  Historical  novel  for 
historical  novel,  '  Pickwick '  is  superior  to  the 
'Tale  of  Two  Cities,'  and  'Nicholas  Nickleby' 
to  '  Barnaby  Rudge.'     No  historical  novelist  will 

18 


THE    HISTORICAL   NOVEL 

ever  be  able  to  set  before  us  the  state  of  affairs  in 
the  South  in  the  decade  preceding  the  Civil  War 
with  the  variety  and  the  veracity  of 'Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin,'  written  in  that  decade.  No  American 
historian  has  a  more  minute  acquaintance  with 
the  men  who  made  the  United  States  than  Mr. 
Paul  Leicester  Ford ;  and  yet  one  may  venture  to 
predict  that  Mr.  Ford  will  never  write  a  historical 
novel  having  a  tithe  of  the  historical  value  pos- 
sessed by  his  suggestive  study  of  the  conditions 
of  contemporary  politics  in  New  York  city,  the 
'Honorable  Peter  Stirling.'  Nevertheless  there 
are  few  librarians  bold  enough  to  catalogue  'Pick- 
wick '  and  'Uncle  Tom '  and  '  Peter  Stirling '  under 
historical  fiction. 

One  of  the  foremost  merits  of  the  novel,  as  of 
the  drama,  is  that  it  enlarges  our  sympathy.  It 
compels  us  to  shift  our  point  of  view,  and  often 
to  assume  that  antithetic  to  our  custom.  It  forces 
us  to  see  not  only  how  the  other  half  lives,  but 
also  how  it  feels  and  how  it  thinks.  We  learn 
not  merely  what  the  author  meant  to  teach  us: 
we  absorb,  in  addition,  a  host  of  things  he  did 
not  know  he  was  putting  in  —  things  he  took 
for  granted,  some  of  them,  and  things  he  implied 
as  a  matter  of  course.  This  unconscious  rich- 
ness of  instruction  cannot  but  be  absent  from 
the  historical  novel  —  or  at  best  it  is  so  obscured 
as  to  be  almost  non-existent. 

'9 


THE   HISTORICAL  NOVEL 

In  'Anna  Karenina'  one  can  see  Russian  life 
in  the  end  of  this  century  as  Tolstoy  knows  it, 
having  beheld  it  with  his  own  eyes:  in  'War 
and  Peace '  we  have  Russian  life  in  the  begin- 
ning of  this  century  as  Tolstoy  supposes  it  to 
have  been,  not  having  seen  it.  One  is  the  testi- 
mony of  an  eye-witness:  the  other  is  given  on 
information  and  belief.  '  Pendennis '  and  the 
'Newcomes'  and  'Vanity  Fair' — for  all  that  the 
last  includes  the  battle  of  Waterloo,  fought  when 
Thackeray  was  but  a  boy  —  are  written  out  of 
the  fulness  of  knowledge:  'Henry  Esmond'  is 
written  out  of  the  fulness  of  learning  only.  In 
the  former  there  is  an  unconscious  accuracy  of 
reproduction,  while  in  the  latter  unconsciousness 
is  impossible.  The  historical  novel  cannot  help 
being  what  the  French  call  voulu  —  a  word 
that  denotes  both  effort  and  artificiality.  The 
story-teller  who  deals  honestly  with  his  own 
time  achieves,  without  taking  thought,  a  fidelity 
simply  impossible  to  the  story-teller  who  deals 
with  the  past,  no  matter  how  laboriously  the  lat- 
ter may  toil  after  it. 

In  fact,  the  more  he  labors,  the  less  life  is  there 
likely  to  be  in  the  tale  he  is  telling:  humanity  is 
choked  by  archeology.  It  calls  for  no  research 
to  set  forth  the  unending  conflict  of  duty  and 
desire,  for  example.  If  we  examine  carefully  the 
best  of  the  stories  usually  classed  under  historical 

20 


THE    HISTORICAL   NOVEL 

fiction  we  shall  find  those  to  be  the  most  satis- 
factory in  which  the  history  is  of  least  importance, 
in  which  it  is  present  only  as  a  background. 
The  examination  may  lead  to  a  subdivision  of 
the  class  of  historical  fiction  into  the  actual  his- 
torical novel  and  the  novel  in  which  history  is 
wholly  subordinate,  not  to  say  merely  incidental. 

A  British  critic,  Professor  George  Saintsbury, 
has  laid  down  the  law  that  "the  true  historical 
novelist  employs  the  reader's  presumed  interest 
in  historical  scene  and  character  as  an  instrument 
to  make  his  own  work  attractive."  Although  it 
would  be  easy  to  dissent  from  this  dictum,  it  may 
be  used  to  explain  the  distinction  drawn  in  the 
preceding  paragraph.  A  tale  of  the  past  is  not 
necessarily  a  true  historical  novel:  it  is  a  true  his- 
torical novel  only  when  the  historical  events  are 
woven  into  the  texture  of  the  story.  Applying 
this  test,  we  see  that  the  '  Bride  of  Lammermoor ' 
is  not  a  true  historical  novel;  and  this  is  perhaps 
the  reason  why  it  is  held  in  high  esteem  by  all 
lovers  of  genuine  Romance.  By  the  same  token, 
the  '  Scarlet  Letter '  is  not  a  true  historical  novel. 

Neither  in  the  'Bride  of  Lammermoor '  nor  in 
the  '  Scarlet  Letter '  is  there  any  reliance  upon 
historical  scene  or  character  for  attraction.  Scott 
was  narrating  again  a  legend  of  an  inexplicable 
mystery:  but  although  the  period  of  its  occur- 
rence was  long  past  when  he  wrote,  he  presented 

21 


THE   HISTORICAL   NOVEL 

simply  the  characters  enmeshed  in  the  fateful  ad- 
venture, and  relied  for  the  attractiveness  of  his 
story  upon  the  inherent  interest  of  the  weird 
climax  toward  which  the  reader  is  hurried  breath- 
less under  the  weight  of  impending  doom. 
Hawthorne  was  captivated  by  a  study  of  con- 
science, the  incidents  of  which  could  be  brought 
out  more  conveniently  and  more  effectively  by 
throwing  back  the  time  of  the  tale  into  the  re- 
mote past. 

In  another  story  of  Scott's,  not  equal  to  the 
'Bride  of  Lammermoor'  in  its  tragic  intensity, 
but  superb  in  its  resolute  handling  of  emotion, 
the  'Heart  of  Midlothian,'  there  is  perhaps  a 
stiffer  infusion  of  actual  history;  but  it  would  be 
rash  to  suggest  that  in  its  composition  the  author 
relied  on  historical  scene  or  character  to  make 
his  work  attractive.  The  attraction  of  the  '  Heart 
of  Midlothian  '  lies  in  its  presentation  of  character 
at  the  crisis  of  its  existence.  So  in  the  '  Romola  ' 
of  George  Eliot,  although  the  author  obviously 
spent  her  strength  in  trying  to  transmute  the  an- 
nals of  Florence  into  her  narrative,  the  historical 
part  is  unconvincing;  the  episode  of  Savonarola 
is  seen  to  be  an  excrescence;  and  what  remains 
erect  now  is  a  wholly  imaginary  trinity  —  the 
noble  figure  of  Romola,  the  pretty  womanliness 
of  little  Tessa,  and  the  easy-going  Tito,  with  his 
moral  fiber  slowly  disintegrating  under  succes- 

22 


THE   HISTORICAL   NOVEL 

sive  temptations.  Tito  is  one  of  the  great  tri- 
umphs of  modern  fiction,  not  because  he  is  a 
Greek  of  the  Renascence,  but  because  he  is  eternal 
and  to  be  found  whenever  and  wherever  man 
lacks  strength  to  resist  himself 

If  we  were  thus  to  go  down  the  list  of  so-called 
historical  novels,  one  by  one,  we  might  discover 
that  those  which  were  most  solidly  rooted  in  our 
regard  and  affection  are  to  be  included  in  the  sub- 
division wherein  history  itself  is  only  a  casual 
framework  for  a  searching  study  of  human  char- 
acter, and  that  they  are  cherished  for  the  very 
same  qualities  as  are  possessed  by  the  great  nov- 
els of  modern  life.  Without  going  so  far  as  to 
say  that  the  best  historical  novel  is  that  which 
has  the  least  history,  we  may  at  least  confess  the 
frank  inferiority  of  the  other  subdivision  in  which 
the  author  has  been  rash  enough  to  employ  his- 
torical scene  and  character  to  make  his  own 
work  attractive.  What  gives  charm  and  value  to 
'  Henry  Esmond '  is  exactly  what  gives  charm 
and  value  to  '  Vanity  Fair '  —  Thackeray's  under- 
standing of  his  fellow-man,  his  sympathetic  in- 
sight into  human  nature,  his  happy  faculty  for 
dramatically  revealing  character  by  situation. 
Perhaps  the  eighteenth-century  atmosphere,  with 
which  Thackeray  was  able  to  surround  Esmond 
only  by  infinite  skill,  is  not  breathed  comfortably 
by  the  most  of  those  who  enjoy  the  book  for  its 

23 


THE    HISTORICAL   NOVEL 

manly  qualities.  One  feels  that  the  author  has  won 
his  wager — but  at  what  a  cost,  and  at  what  a  risk ! 

Some  logical  readers  of  this  essay  may  be 
moved  to  put  two  and  two  together,  and  to 
accuse  the  present  writer  of  a  desire  to  disparage 
the  historical  novel,  because  he  has  tried  to 
show,  first,  that  the  novelists  cannot  reproduce 
in  their  pages  the  men  and  women  of  dnother 
epoch  as  these  really  thought  and  felt,  and,  sec- 
ond, that  the  novelists  who  have  attempted  his- 
torical fiction  have  best  succeeded  when  they 
brought  the  fiction  to  the  center  of  the  stage  and 
left  the  history  in  the  background.  But  to  draw 
this  conclusion  would  be  unjust,  since  the  writer 
really  agrees  with  the  views  of  Sainte-Beuve  as 
expressed  in  a  letter  to  Champfleury :  "The  novel 
is  a  vast  field  of  experiment,  open  tD  all  the  forms 
of  genius.  It  is  the  future  epic,  the  only  one, 
probably,  that  modern  manners  will  hereafter 
justify.  Let  us  not  bind  it  too  tightly;  let  us 
not  lay  down  its  theory  too  rigidly;  let  us  not 
organize  it." 

To  point  out  that  a  historical  novel  is  great  — 
when  it  is  great  —  because  of  its  possession  of 
the  identical  qualities  that  give  validity  to  a 
study  of  modern  life,  is  not  to  suggest  that  only 
the  contemporary  novel  is  legitimate.  To  dwell 
on  the  deficiencies  of  the  historical  novel  is  not 
to  propose  that  only  realistic  fiction  be  tolerated 

24 


THE   HISTORICAL   NOVEL 

hereafter.  But  perhaps  a  due  consideration  of 
these  inherent  defects  of  the  historical  novel  may 
lead  the  disinterested  reader  to  confess  its  essen- 
tial inferiority  to  the  more  authentic  fiction,  in 
which  the  story-teller  reports  on  humanity  as  he 
actually  sees  it.  And  if  Romance  is  preferred  to 
Realism,  Romance  is  purest  when  purged  of  all 
affectation. 

Genuine  Romance  is  always  as  delightful  as 
shoddy  Romanticism  is  always  detestable.  Fan- 
tasy is  ever  beautiful,  when  it  presents  itself 
frankly  as  fantasy.  '  Undine  '  does  not  pretend 
to  accuracy;  and  the  'Arabian  Nights'  never 
vaunted  itself  as  founded  on  the  facts  of  Haroun- 
al-Rashid's  career.  Stevenson's  romances,  artis- 
tically truthful,  though  they  contradict  the  vulgar 
facts  of  every-day  existence, — 'Markheim,'  for 
example,  and  the  'Strange Case  of  Dr.  Jekyll  and 
Mr.  Hyde,' — bid  fair  to  outlive  his  Romanticist 
admixtures  of  Scott  and  Dumas;  and  the 'New 
Arabian  Nights,'  with  its  matter-of-fact  impossi- 
bility, will  outweigh  the  'Master  of  Ballantrae' 
a  dozen  times  over.  But  pure  Romance  and  ^ 
frank  fantasy  are  strangely  rare ;  there  are  very  few 
Hoffmanns  and  Fouques,  Poes  and  Stevensons, 
in  a  century  —  and  only  one  Hawthorne. 

Not  long  ago  an  enterprising  American  journal- 
ist wrote  to  some  twoscore  of  the  story-tellers 
of  Great  Britain  and  of  the  United  States  to  inquire 

25 


THE    HISTORICAL    NOVEL 

what,  in  their  opinion,  the  object  of  the  novel 
was.  Haifa  dozen  of  the  replies  declared  that  it 
was  "to  realize  life";  and  the  rest  —  an  immense 
majority — were  satisfied  to  say  that  it  was  "to 
amuse."  Here  we  see  the  practitioners  of  the  art 
divided  in  defining  its  purpose;  and  a  like  diver- 
sity of  opinion  can  be  detected  among  the  vast 
army  of  novel-readers.  Some  think  that  fiction 
ought  to  be  literature,  and  that  "  literature  is  a 
criticism  of  life."  Some  hold  that  fiction  is  mere 
story-telling  —  the  stringing  together  of  adven- 
ture, the  heaping  up  of  excitement,  with  the 
wish  of  forgetting  life  as  it  is,  of  getting  outside 
of  the  sorry  narrowness  of  sordid  and  common- 
place existence  into  a  fairy-land  of  dreams  where 
Cinderella  always  marries  Prince  Charming  and 
where  the  haughty  sisters  always  meet  with 
their  just  punishment.  It  is  to  readers  of  this  sec- 
ond class  that  the  ordinary  historical  novel  ap- 
peals with  peculiar  force;  for  it  provides  the  drug 
they  desire,  while  they  can  salve  their  conscience 
during  this  dissipation  with  the  belief  that  they 
are,  at  the  same  time,  improving  their  minds. 
The  historical  novel  is  aureoled  with  a  pseudo- 
sanctity,  in  that  it  purports  to  be  more  instruc- 
tive than  a  mere  story:  it  claims  —  or  at  least  the 
claim  is  made  in  its  behalf — that  it  is  teaching 
history.  There  are  those  who  think  that  it  thus 
adds  hypocrisy  to  its  other  faults. 

26 


THE    HISTORICAL   NOVEL 

Bagehot  —  and  there  is  no  acuter  critic  of  men 
and   books,  and  none  with  less  literary  bias  — 
Bagehot  suggested  that  the  immense  popularity 
of  Ivanhoe'  was  due  to  the  fact  that  "it  de- 
scribes the  Middle  Ages  as  we  should  wish  them 
to  be."     This   falsification   characteristic  of  the 
historical   novel  in   general   is   one  of  its  chief 
charms  in  the  eyes  of  those  who  like  to  be  rav- 
ished out  of  themselves   into  an   illusion   of  a 
world  better  than  the  one  they,  unfortunately, 
have  to  live  in.     "  All  sensible  people  know  that 
the  Middle  Ages  must  have  been  very  uncom- 
fortable," continues  Bagehot.     "No  one  knew 
the  abstract  facts  on  which  this  conclusion  rests 
better  than  Scott;  but  his  delineation  gives  no 
general  idea  of  the  result:  a  thoughtless  reader 
rises  with  the  impression  that  the  Middle  Ages 
had  the  same  elements  of  happiness  which  we 
have  at  present,  and  that  they  had  fighting  be- 
sides."   Scott  knew  better,  of  course;  but  though 
"when  aroused,  he  could  take  a  distinct  view  of 
the  opposing  facts,  he  liked  his  own  mind  to 
rest  for  the  most  part  in  the  same  pleasing  illu- 
sion,"   Perhaps  Bagehot  might  have  agreed  with 
some  later  critics  who  have  held  that  many  of 
Scott's  novels  are  immoral  because  of  this  falsifi- 
cation of  historic  truth  — -  a  charge  which  receives 
iTS'^pport  from  the  '  Bride  of  Lammermoor,' 
for  example,  nor  from  the  '  Heart  of  Midlothian,' 

27 


THE    HISTORICAL  NOVEL 


and  half  a  dozen  other  of  his  stories,  in  which 
Scott's  strong  sense  of  reality  and  his  fine  feel- 
ing for  Romance  are  displayed  in  perfect  harmony. 

(>897) 


28 


II 

ROMANCE  AGAINST 
ROMANTICISM 


A 


'^^  /^  ^tl^. 


ROMANCE   AGAINST   ROMANTICISM 

AN  obvious  advantage  which  science  possesses 
i\  over  art  is  that  its  vocabulary  is  precise  and 
exact.  When  a  man  of  science  has  occasion  to 
use  terms  like  Horse-power,  Foot-ton,  Peroxid, 
Volt,  not  only  does  he  himself  know  absolutely 
what  he  himself  means,  but  he  can  be  confident 
that  those  whom  he  addresses  must  also  know 
absolutely  what  he  means.  These  scientific 
terms  may  be  awkward  or  ugly, —  as  indeed 
many  of  them  are, —  but  nevertheless  they  are 
accepted  as  having  an  unchanging  content. 
They  never  suggest  more  or  less  at  one  time  than 
at  another.  They  pass  current  everywhere  at 
their  face-value;  the  rate  of  exchange  never  va- 
ries. But  the  terms  which  any  critic  of  art  must 
use  lack  this  useful  rigidity;  they  are  ever  flex- 
ible, not  to  say  fluid.  They  are  all  things  to  all 
men.  They  are  chameleons,  changing  color 
while  we  gaze  at  them.  They  are  modified  by 
the  personality  of  the  user  first  of  all,  and  then 
by  that  of  every  several  individual  among  those 

31 


ROMANCE  AGAINST   ROMANTICISM 

he  is   addressing.     The  epithet  which   to   one 
savors  of  eulogy  to  another  reeks  with  oppro- 
brium.    The  word  which  is  a  term  of  reproach 
in   the  mouth    of  a   speaker  belonging  to  one 
school  is  a  badge  of  honor  at  the  hands  of  an 
adherent  of  another  theory.     When,  for  example, 
have  any  two  theoreticians  of  esthetics  ever  agreed 
on  a  definition  of  beauty  ?    When  have  any  two 
critics  of  literature  ever  accepted  the  same  defini- 
tion of  poetry  ?    We  may  each  of  us  think  that 
A^    ^  '^        he  understands  the   difference  between  Classic 
^^^      ^       and  Romantic,  between  Romantic  and  Realistic, 
*V       M'      between  Realistic  and    Idealistic,   and   between 
^  Realistic  and  Naturalistic;  but  any  of  us  would 

be  sadly  rash  if  he  should  expect  that  the  half  or 
the  quarter  of  those  he  was  trying  to  reach  un- 
derstood this  antithesis  or  that  exactly  as  he  did. 
In  all  artistic  discussion  the  meaning  each  of  the 
disputants  attaches  to  the  special  words  he  is 
using  is  the  final  expression  of  his  personal 
equation. 

Although  there  is  really  no  hope  that  any  sci- 
entific precision  will  ever  be  attained  in  the 
terminology  of  esthetics  or  that  men  of  letters 
will  ever  agree  on  the  meaning  they  will  attach 
to  important  words,  discussion  may  help  to 
bring  about  clearer  knowledge.  Especially  may 
it  lead  to  a  sharper  differentiation  between  words 
often   loosely  regarded  as   synonymous.      Few 

32 


ROMANCE   AGAINST   ROMANTICISM 

lovers  of  poetry,  who  desire  not  merely  to  enjoy 
but  seek  also  to  understand  and  appreciate, 
would  deny  the  abiding  value  of  the  distinction 
between  fancy  and  the  imagination  —  a  distinc- 
tion first  insisted  upon  by  the  Lake  Poets  a  scant 
century  ago. 

Who  was  it  who  said  that  every  man  was 
born  either  a  Platonist  or  an  Aristotelian,  whether 
he  knew  it  or  not  ?  So,  in  another  sense,  must 
every  man  be  born  either  a  Greek  or  a  Goth. 
His  native  temperament  either  forces  him  to 
accept  the  Latin  tradition  of  restraint  and  mod- 
eration, or  else  it  urges  him  to  follow  rather  the 
Teutonic  ideal  of  individuality  and  self-assertion. 
If  he  is  really  interested  in  life,  he  cannot  choose 
but  enlist  in  the  one  camp  or  the  other,  however 
strong  his  desire  to  preserve  a  benevolent  neu- 
trality. And  what  he  is  in  matters  of  public  pol- 
icy he  is  likely  to  be  in  his  private  tastes  also. 
Either  he  delights  in  the  Classic  or  else  he  prefers 
the  Romantic:  for  him  to  be  an  Eclectic  is  a  stark 
impossibility;  and  it  is  only  the  few  who  care 
nothing  for  the  cause  of  the  quarrel  who  can 
raise  the  cry,  "A  plague  on  both  your  houses!" 

But  among  those  who  delight  in  the  Classic 
there  is  no  unanimity  in  declaring  just  what  the 
Classic  is:  and  there  is  even  greater  disagree- 
ment among  those  who  prefer  the  Romantic  as 
to  the  full  meaning  of  the  word.     The  first  chap- 

33 


ROMANCE   AGAINST   ROMANTICISM 

ter  of  Professor  Beers's  illuminative  '  History  of 
English  Romanticism '  is  taken  up  with  an  attempt 
to  collect  and  to  classify  the  manifold  definitions 
of  the  spirit  which  animated  the  Romantic  move- 
ment in  Germany  and  France  and  England;  and 
in  all  the  various  histories  of  literature  in  all  the 
various  modern  languages  it  would  be  difficult 
to  discover  a  chapter  more  interesting  or  more 
instructive;  and  a  careful  perusal  of  it  may  be 
recommended  to  every  historian  of  literary  de- 
velopment who  persists  dogmatically  in  using 
the  terms  of  esthetic  criticism  as  though  they 
had  a  scientific  precision. 

Professor  Beers  quotes  Heine's  assertion  that 
"all  the  poetry  of  the  Middle  Ages  has  a  certain 
definite  character,  through  which  it  differs  from 
the  poetry  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans,"  and  that 
"in  reference  to  this  difference,  the  former  is 
called  Romantic,  the  latter  Classic,"  although 
these  names  "are  misleading  and  have  caused 
the  most  vexatious  confusion."  One  reason  why 
these  terms  are  misleading  is  that  in  our  ordinary 
use  of  the  two  words  we  are  accustomed  to  find 
in  Classic  a  certain  worthiness,  as  of  abiding 
merit,  whereas  in  Romantic  we  feel  a  certain 
unworthiness,  as  conveying  at  least  a  flavor  of 
extravagance  or  freakishness.  Thus  we  say  that 
Angelica  Kauffmann's  marriage  was  "very  roman- 
tic," and  that  Lincoln's  Gettysburg  Address  is 

34 


ROMANCE   AGAINST   ROMANTICISM 

"truly  a  classic."  And  Pater,  taking  a  hint  per- 
haps from  this  ordinary  use  of  words,  came  to 
the  conclusion  that  the  Classic  has  "order  in 
beauty,"  and  the  Romantic  "strangeness  added 
to  beauty." 

So  Professor  Beers  keeps  on  assembling  and 
comparing  the  criterions  proposed  successively 
for  determining  the  essential  quality  of  the  Ro- 
mantic. "  First  it  was  mystery,  then  aspiration; 
now  it  is  the  appeal  to  the  emotions  by  the 
method  of  suggestion.  And  yet  there  is,  per- 
haps, no  inconsistency  on  the  critic's  part  in  this 
continual  shifting  of  his  ground.  He  is  apparently 
presenting  different  facets  of  the  same  truth ;  he 
means  one  thing  by  his  mystery,  aspiration,  in- 
defmiteness,  incompleteness,  emotional  sugges- 
tiveness;  that  quality  or  effect  which  we  all  feel 
to  be  present  in  Romantic  and  absent  from 
Classical  work." 

Perhaps  it  is  rash  for  any  one  to  venture  a 
further  effort  to  distinguish  more  precisely  things 
which  we  all  recognize  as  dissimilar,  not  to  say 
antithetic.  But  it  may  not  be  adding  to  the  con- 
fusion to  assert  that  those  of  us  who  seek  in  a 
work  of  art  specially  the  normal  and  the  typical 
presented  with  rigorous  severity  of  form  are  on 
the  side  of  the  Classics,  no  matter  what  we  may 
choose  to  call  ourselves;  and  that,  on  the  other 
hand,  those  of  us  who  relish  rather  the  abnormal 

35 


ROMANCE   AGAINST   ROMANTICISM 

and  the  unusual  revealed  with  incomplete  sug- 
gestiveness  are  to  be  counted  with  the  Roman- 
tics, whatever  we  ourselves  may  declare.  On 
the  one  side  are  those  who  enjoy  simplicity  and 
worship  beauty,  and  on  the  other  are  those  who 
prefer  complexity,  and  who  get  their  pleasure 
from  the  picturesque.  As  it  happens,  the  noblest 
examples  of  simple  beauty  are  Greek,  and  the 
finest  illustrations  of  complex  picturesqueness 
are  medieval.  But  whether  it  is  the  Parthenon 
or  Notre  Dame,  whether  it  is  the  work  of  the 
Athenians  or  of  the  Parisians,  a  masterpiece  of 
the  Classic  or  a  masterpiece  of  the  Romantic  is 
always  the  direct  and  honest  expression  of  the 
men  who  wrought  it. 

But  the  high  merit  of  these  masterpieces  has 
attracted  imitators,  lacking  in  sincerity  and  not 
seeking  to  express  themselves  directly  or  hon- 
estly. Of  course  it  is  right  and  proper  in  all  the 
arts  that  the  young  should  model  themselves  at 
first  on  their  elders  and  betters,  learning  all  these 
have  to  teach,  and  beginning  where  these  left 
off;  but  this  fertile  acceptance  is  as  different  as 
may  be  from  sterile  copying  of  formulas.  One 
is  a  free-hand  drawing  and  the  other  is  a  mere 
mechanical  tracing. 

Classic  denotes  imperishable  beauty,  while 
Classicism  (to  me  at  least)  connotes  a  frigid  imir. 
tation.     Classic  is  free,  while  Classicism  is  bound. 

36 


r 


Affl^.A.^:^.l^       ^  .uU,.tM^ 


ROMANCE   AGAINST   ROMANTICISM 

Shakspere  is  the  great  English  classic ;  but  Classi- 
cism in  English  literature  is  embodied  in  Pope. 
So  Romance  is  genuine,  while  Romanticism  is 
pinchbeck.  True  Romance,  whether  ancient  or 
medieval  or  modern,  is  as  sincere  and  as  direct 
and  as  honest  as  the  Classic  itself.  And  it  needs 
to  be  distinguished  sharply  from  Romanticism, 
which  is  often  insincere,  generally  indirect,  and 
sometimes  artistically  dishonest.  Just  as  we 
need  to  set  off  sham  Classicism  from  the  noble 
Classic,  so  we  ought  to  dwell  on  the  essential 
difference  between  Romance  and  its  bastard  bro- 
ther Romanticism— between  the  genuine  Ro- 
mantic and  the  imitative  Romanticist. 

The  Romantic  calls  up  the  idea  of  something 
primary,  spontaneous,  and  perhaps  medieval, 
while  the  Romanticist  suggests  something  sec- 
ondary, conscious,  and  of  recent  fabrication. 
Romance,  like  many  another  thing  of  beauty,  is 
very  rare;  but  Romanticism  is  common  enough 
nowadays.  The  truly  Romantic  is  difficult  to 
achieve;  but  the  artificial  Romanticist  is  so  easy 
as  to  be  scarce  worth  the  attempting.  The 
Romantic  is  ever  young,  ever  fresh,  ever  delight- 
ful; but  the  Romanticist  is  stale  and  second-hand 
and  unendurable.  Romance  is  never  in  danger 
of  growing  old,  for  it  deals  with  the  spirit  of  man 
without  regard  to  times  and  seasons ;  but  Roman- 
ticism gets  out  of  date  with  every  twist  of  the 

37 


<^^'<IJP  «L,f\J-  f*W^^ 


ROMANCE  AGAINST  ROMANTICISM 

kaleidoscope  of  literary  fashion.  The  Romantic 
is  eternally  and  essentially  true,  but  the  Roman- 
ticist is  inevitably  false.  Romance  is  sterling, 
but  Romanticism  is  shoddy. 

it  may  be  admitted  that  this  distinction  be- 
tween the  Romantic  and  the  Romanticist  is  not 
self-evident,  and  that  it  is  not  always  easily  ap- 
prehended. Perhaps  his  failure  to  bring  it  out 
clearly  and  to  emphasize  it  is  one  reason  why 
Mr.  Howells's  attitude  toward  Romance  has  been 
misunderstood  and  that  he  has  been  accused  of 
intolerance  and  even  of  attack,  when  it  is  only 
barren  Romanticism  he  detests  and  despises,  and 
when  he  has  more  than  once  gladly  recorded 
his  delight  in  true  Romance.  Difficult  it  is 
always  to  expose  a  sham,  without  seeming  to  be 
disrespectful  toward  that  which  it  degrades  by 
its  mimicry.  So  the  unsparing  laying  bare  of 
hypocrisy  in  Moliere's  *  Tartuffe '  was  held  by 
many  good  people  to  be  little  better  than  an 
assault  on  the  church  itself. 

It  was  Mill  who  said  that  "  the  truth  of  poetry 
is  to  paint  the  human  soul  truly,"  and  that  "the 
truth  of  fiction  is  to  give  a  true  picture  of  life." 
Romance,  however,  detached  from  the  accidental 
and  encumbering  facts  of  existence,  is  always  in 
accord  with  the  essential  truth  of  life.  Romance 
never  contradicts  reality,  whereas  Romanticism 
is  in  constant  disaccord  not  merely  with  fact  but 

38 


ROMANCE   AGAINST   ROMANTICISM 

even  more  with  truth  itself.  The  elder  Haw- 
thorne was  a  writer  of  Romance  and  the  elder 
Dumas  was  a  compounder  of  Romanticism;  and 
it  was  the  author  of  the  '  House  of  the  Seven 
Gables '  who  asserted  that  Romance,  "  while  as  a 
work  of  art  it  must  rigidly  subject  itself  to  laws, 
and  while  it  sins  unpardonably  so  far  as  it  may 
swerve  aside  from  the  truth  of  the  human  heart, 
has  fairly  a  right  to  present  that  truth  under  cir- 
cumstances to  a  great  extent  of  the  writer's  own 
choosing  or  creation." 

Here  Hawthorne  asks  no  release  from  the  eter- 
nal verities,  but  insists  on  permission  to  deal  with 
brave  translunary  things,  and  to  lay  the  scene  of 
his  story  in  the  Forest  of  Arden  or  in  the  Bo- 
hemia which  is  a  desert  country  by  the  sea,  illu- 
mined by  a  light  that  never  was  and  echoing 
with  battles  long  ago.  But  how  far  are  these 
enchanted  realms  from  the  topsy-turvy  territory 
where  the  throng  of  disciples  of  Dumas  invite  us 
to  follow  —  a  strange  place  indeed,  where  happy 
accidents  and  marvelous  coincidences  and  spe- 
cial providences  happen  many  times  a  day.  It 
is  in  fact  an  undiscovered  country  from  whose 
bourn  no  traveler  returns  —  except  to  tell  trav- 
elers' tales.  It  is  a  kingdom  where  dwell  blame- 
less heroes  of  a  perfect  courage  who  strive  with 
villains  of  an  abhorrent  turpitude  and  who  adore 
scornful  ladies  of  an  ethereal  beauty.     In  a  region 

39 


ROMANCE  AGAINST   ROMANTICISM 

inhabited  by  these  unnatural  monsters,  what 
chances  of  acceptance  have  the  eternal  verities  ? — 
what  possibility  is  there  for  a  true  picture  of  life 
or  for  a  true  painting  of  the  human  soul  ? 

For  these  shabby  puppets  of  the  worn-out  Ro- 
manticist true  Romance  cares  nothing,  needing 
no  more  than  a  man  and  a  maid  and  a  spring 
morning.  Romance  is  in  the  heart  of  man,  and 
not  in  the  circus-trappings  of  pseudo-history. 
Romance  is,  in  the  nature  of  things,  young  and 
eternal:  it  is  not  a  machine-made  output  of  a 
fiction-factory.     Romance  is  not  necessarily  one 

who  discerns 
No  character  or  glory  in  his  times, 
And  trundles  back  his  soul  five  hundred  years, 
Past  moat  and  drawbridge,  into  a  castle-court. 

Romance  is  not  a  thing  that  lived  yesterday 
and  is  dead  to-day  —  although  it  blossoms  in 
the  twilight  atmosphere  of  Once  upon  a  Time. 
Romance  has  no  more  to  do  with  the  tilting  at 
Ashby-de-la-Zouch  than  it  has  to  do  with  a  corner 
on  the  Stock  Exchange:  it  has  to  do  with  men, 
medieval  or  modern,  no  matter  —  with  men  as 
they  go  forth  to  do  their  duty,  to  be  tempted 
and  lured,  to  conquer  the  lust  of  the  flesh,  to  fall 
into  sin  and  to  pay  the  penalty,  to  make  the 
brave  fight,  be  the  end  of  the  struggle  what  it 
may.     Romance  is  where  men  are,  with  the  pas- 

40 


ROMANCE   AGAINST   ROMANTICISM 

sions  and  strivings  of  men;  and  it  takes  no  ac- 
count of  costume  and  of  furniture  and  of  the  acci- 
dental accompaniments  of  human  existence. 

Romance  lived  with  the  Cave-men  and  the 
Lake-folk;  with  the  Norseman  and  the  Crusa- 
der; with  the  Cavalier  and  the  Puritan;  with  the 
Minute-men  of  Lexington  and  with  the  Young 
Guard  at  Waterloo;  with  every  man  who  is  stout 
of  soul  and  who  has  an  eye  for  a  pretty  girl ;  with 
every  woman  who  is,  or  hopes  to  be,  a  wife  and 
a  mother.  "Where  heart-blood  beat  or  hearth- 
smoke  curled,"  there  Romance  wove  his  spell. 

"  Romance!  "  the  season  tickets  mourn. 

"  He  never  ran  to  catch  his  train, 
But  passed  with  coach  and  guard  and  horn— 

And  left  the  local— late  again! 
Confound  Romance!  "     And  all  unseen 
Romance  brought  up  the  nine-fifteen. 

His  hand  was  on  the  lever  laid, 

His  oil-can  soothed  the  worrying  cranks, 

His  whistle  waked  the  snow-bound  grade, 
His  fog-horn  cut  the  reeking  Banks  : 

By  dock  and  deep  and  mine  and  mill 

The  Boy-god,  reckless,  labored  still! 

And  after  this  quotation  in  verse  from  Mr. 
Kipling,  let  me  make  another  in  prose  from  Mr. 
Stevenson:  "True  romantic  art  again  makes  a 
Romance  of  all  things.   It  reaches  into  the  highest 

41 


ROMANCE   AGAINST   ROMANTICISM 

abstraction  of  the  ideal;  it  does  not  refuse  the 
most  pedestrian  Realism.  '  Robinson  Crusoe '  is 
as  realistic  as  it  is  romantic:  both  qualities  are 
pushed  to  an  extreme,  and  neither  suffers.  Nor 
does  Romance  depend  upon  the  material  impor- 
tance of  the  incidents.  To  deal  with  strong  and 
deadly  elements,  banditti,  pirates,  war,  and  mur- 
der, is  to  conjure  with  great  names,  and,  in  the 
event  of  failure,  double  the  disgrace.  The  arrival 
of  Haydn  and  Consuelo  at  the  Canon's  villa  is  a  very 
trifling  incident :  yet  we  may  read  a  dozen  boister- 
ous stories  from  beginning  to  end,  and  not  receive 
so  fresh  and  stirring  an  impression  of  adventure." 
This  is  Romance  as  Stevenson  saw  it;  and 
Romanticism  is  not  like  unto  this.  Romanticism 
is  feebly  fond  of  the  "strong  and  deadly  elements, 
banditti,  pirates,  war,  and  murder" — the  stage- 
properties  and  supernumeraries  of  the  pseudo-his- 
toric. The  '  Bride  of  Lammermoor'  is  Romance 
indeed  and  of  a  lofty  type:  but  is  not  Mvanhoe' 
contaminated  with  mere  Romanticism  ?  Now 
and  again  Dickens  struck  the  true  note,  but  only 
infrequently;  and  the  'Tale  of  Two  Cities,'  with 
the  immoral  self-sacrifice  at  the  core  of  it,  is 
Romanticism  in  its  most  tortuous  type.  Haw- 
thorne is  less  likely  to  go  astray  than  most:  he  is 
sometimes  somewhat  over-insistent  on  his  fan- 
tasy, but  he  never  slips  headlong  into  the  slough 
of  Romanticism.     His  footing  is  more  secure  in 

42 


ROMANCE   AGAINST   ROMANTICISM 

the  '  Blithedale  Romance '  than  in  the  '  Marble 
Faun.'  He  complained  that  there  was  as  yet 
here  in  America  no  "Faery  Land,  so  like  the  real 
world  that  in  suitable  remoteness  one  cannot 
well  tell  the  difference,  but  with  an  atmosphere 
of  strange  enchantment,  beheld  through  which 
the  inhabitants  have  a  propriety  of  their  own  " — 
and  yet  we  all  see  a  solid  certainty  in  his  Brook 
Farm,  while  few  can  help  feeling  a  faint  unreality 
in  his  Rome. 

The  truly  Romantic  is  not  morbid;  rather  is  it 
sane  and  sunny,  even  if  the  clouds  gather  in 
time  and  the  light  is  quenched  at  last.  But  the 
Romanticist,  where  it  is  not  merely  foolish,  is 
often  sickly,  as  Goethe  said,  contrasting  Roman- 
ticism with  the  Classic.  To  a  student  of  German 
literature.  Romanticism  suggests  1802  and  the 
blue  flower  of  Novalis.  To  a  student  of  French 
literature.  Romanticism  evokes  1830  and  the  red 
waistcoat  of  Gautier.  And  it  was  Goethe  again 
who  dismissed  *  Hernani '  as  absurd.  True  Ro- 
mance there  is  in  both  languages,  '  Undine  '  in 
the  one  and  the  '  Princess  of  Cleves '  in  the  other, 
for  example:  but  in  neither  language  is  the  Ro- 
manticist ever  really  healthy.  In  German  there  is 
an  obvious  tendency  to  degenerate  into  mere 
gush :  and  in  French  there  is  an  equally  obvious 
tendency  toward  illegality.  Hugo  and  Dumas 
were   prone   to   exalt  the  outlaw;   and  it   was 

43 


ROMANCE   AGAINST   ROMANTICISM 

Thiers  who  decbred   that  the   Communists  of 
1 87 1  were  only  the  Romanticists  of  1830. 

This  note  of  revolt  is  to  be  heard  more  particu- 
larly in  the  Romanticism  of  France,  although  it 
is  at  times  audible  also  in  England;  it  is  resonant 
enough  in  Byron.  But  the  special  peculiarity  of 
the  heroes  of  English  Romanticism  is  their  lack 
of  common  sense.  They  are  feeble  folk,  most  of 
them,  the  pale  spirits  evoked  by  Keats  and  Shelley, 
mooning  foolishly  through  a  useless  existence. 
"Uncanny  creatures,"  they  have  been  called, 
"spectral,  prone  to  posing,  psychologically  shal- 
low." But  the  heroes  of  Romance,  of  true  Ro- 
mance, are  not  of  this  sort;  they  are  brave  boys, 
all  of  them,  hearty  and  honest  and  sturdy.  Are 
not  Romeo  and  Orlando  heroes  of  Romance.?  and 
are  they  spectral  or  uncanny  ?  Orlando,  it  is  true, 
roamed  the  forest,  hanging  verses  on  the  melan- 
choly boughs;  but  he  was  a  fine  fellow  for  all 
that — a  good  trencherman  of  a  certainty,  and 
could  try  a  fall  on  occasion.  And  Romeo,  con- 
sumed by  passion  as  he  was,  is  no  dreamy  milk- 
sop, but  a  full-blooded  man,  prompt  to  overleap 
a  garden  wall  and  ready  to 

seal  with  a  righteous  kiss 
A  dateless  bargain  to  engrossing  death. 

The  Romanticist  is  not  seldom  as  sickly  as  it 
is  shallow,  but  the  truly  Romantic   is  always 

44 


ROMANCE   AGAINST   ROMANTICISM 

wholesome.     Indeed,  it  may  even  be  bracing  — 
who  ever  felt  any  relaxing  of  fiber  after  reading 
the  '  Scarlet  Letter '  ?    It  charms  and  it  gives  an 
exquisite  pleasure,   but  it  does  not  enervate  or 
disintegrate  like  Romanticist  fictions.     It  may  be 
tonic;  it  is  never  anodyne.     Mr.  Howells  was 
not  thinking  of  true  Romance,  but  of  the  false 
Romanticism,  when  he  expressed  his  contempt 
for  the   stories   that   are   intended   to   take   the 
reader's  mind  off  himself  and  to  "make  one  for- 
get life  and  all  its  cares  and  duties,"  and  that 
"are  not  in  the  least  like  the  novels  which  make 
you  think  of  these,  and  shame  you  into  at  least 
wishing  to  be  a  helpfuller  and  wholesomer  crea- 
ture than  you  are."     And  then  Mr.  Howells  with 
ill-restrained    scorn    discusses    the    Romanticist 
fictions   with   no  sordid   details  of  verity,  "no 
wretched  being  humbly  and  weakly  struggling 
to  do  right  and  to  be  true,  suffering  for  his  follies 
and  his  sins,  tasting  joy  only  through  the  mortifi- 
cation of  self  and  in  the  help  of  others;  nothing 
of  all  this:  but  a  great,  whirling  splendor  of  peril 
and  achievement,  a  wild  scene  of  heroic  adven- 
ture, and  of  emotional  ground  and  lofty  tumbling, 
with  a  stage  picture  at  the  fall  of  the  curtain,  and 
all  the  good  characters  in  a  row,  their  left  hands 
pressed  upon  their  hearts,  and  kissing  their  right 
hands  to  the  audience." 
To  try  to  point  out  the  difference  between  the 

45 


ROMANCE   AGAINST    ROMANTICISM 

truly  Romantic  and  its  illegitimate  younger  bro- 
ther, the  artificial  Romanticist,  is  not  to  indulge  in 
a  vain  dispute  about  terms;  it  is  to  accomplish 
the  needful  task  of  bringing  out  the  essential  dis- 
tinction between  two  things  often  carelessly  con- 
fused. Even  though  Romanticism  is  not  the  best 
possible  word  to  identify  the  ape  of  genuine  Ro- 
mance, it  remains  the  best  word  available  for  the 
purpose.  As  we  have  no  warrant  to  make  new 
words  at  will,  we  must  needs  differentiate  an  old 
word  by  a  new  use.  Whatever  the  word  that 
shall  finally  win  acceptance  as  describing  the 
thing  here  called  Romanticism,  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  thing  itself  needs  to  be  set  apart 
from  Romance.  Already  do  we  distinguish  be- 
tween fancy  and  imagination,  between  wit  and 
humor  —  although  here  both  of  the  objects  thus 
set  off  one  from  another  are  worthy.  How 
much  more  needful,  then,  is  it  for  us  to  set  off 
Romanticism  from  Romance  just  so  soon  as  we 
see  clearly  that  only  Romance  is  really  worthy 
and  that  Romanticism  is  obviously  unworthy  of 
association  with  it. 
(1900) 


46 


Ill 

NEW  TRIALS  FOR  OLD 
FAVORITES 


NEW  TRIALS  FOR  OLD   FAVORITES 

IN  the  book  of  travels  which  he  has  called  '  Fol- 
lowing the  Equator,'  Mark  Twain  casually 
speaks  of  the '  Vicar  of  Wakefield '  as  "  that  strange 
menagerie  of  complacent  hypocrites  and  idiots, 
of  theatrical  Cheap-John  heroes  and  heroines 
who  are  always  showing  off,  of  bad  people  who 
are  not  interesting,  and  of  good  people  who  are 
fatiguing."  And  the  iconoclastic  humorist,  not 
satisfied  with  this  sweeping  censure,  goes  fur- 
ther, and  calls  Goldsmith's  masterpiece  '"'a  singu- 
lar book,"  with  "  not  a  sincere  line  in  it;  a  book 
which  is  one  long  waste-pipe  discharge  of  goody- 
goody  puerilities  and  dreary  moralities;  a  book 
which  is  full  of  pathos  which  revolts,  and  of 
humor  which  grieves  the  heart." 

This  is  strong  language;  and  with  all  due  re- 
spect for  the  clearness  of  vision  which  Mark 
Twain  has  often  revealed  in  dealing  with  litera- 
ture, as  in  dealing  with  life  itself,  and  with  a 
full  recognition  of  the  implacable  common  sense 
which  is  always  his  chief  characteristic,  I  cannot 

49 


NEW   TRIALS   FOR   OLD   FAVORITES 

but  think  that  he  has  here  overstated  his  case 
against  Goldsmith,  as  he  once  overstated  his 
case  against  Cooper.  The  sentence  of  annihila- 
tion which  he  passes  upon  the  'Vicar  of  Wake- 
field '  is  as  severe  as  that  which  he  passed  upon 
the  Leatherstocking  Tales;  and  they  both  of 
them  seem  to  suggest  rather  the  glad  exaggera- 
tion of  the  wanton  humorist  than  the  severe 
restraint  of  the  cautious  critic. 

And  yet  it  may  be  noted  that  Mr.  Austin 
Dobson,  the  latest  biographer  of  Goldsmith,  had 
frankly  admitted  in  advance  not  a  few  of  the 
charges  which  Mark  Twain  has  harshly  urged. 
Mr.  Dobson  remarked  upon  the  "  structural  in- 
consistencies "  of  the  story  and  upon  "  its  naive 
neglect  of  probability  ";  and  he  asked:  "Where,  in 
the  world  about  us,  do  events  succeed  each  other 
in  such  convenient  sequence.?  Where  do  per- 
sons answer  to  their  names  with  such  opportune 
precision  ?  "  And  he  confessed  also  that  "  we  may 
gape  a  little  over  some  of  its  old-fashioned  max- 
ims. .  .  .  We  may  even  think  Squire  Thornhill 
a  little  too  much  of  the  stage-libertine;  we  may 
have  our  doubts  touching  that  ubiquitous  philan- 
thropist, his  uncle." 

Where  the  British  critic  would  join  issue  with 
the  American  humorist  is  in  traversing  the  charge 
that  there  is  "not  a  sincere  line  in  it,"  since  sin- 
cerity is  the  very  quality  not  to  be  denied  to  the 

50 


NEW  TRIALS   FOR   OLD    FAVORITES 

genial  Irishman.  And  when  Mark  Twain  insists 
that  the  good  characters  in  the  little  tale  are  all 
fatiguing,  it  is  well  to  recall  that  Mr,  Dobson  finds 
the  family  of  Wakefield  to  be  like  Dryden's  milk- 
white  hind,  "  immortal  and  unchanged,"  and  that 
he  holds  them  to  be  "  such  friendly,  such  accus- 
tomed figures,  they  are  so  fixed  and  settled  in  our 
intimacy,  that  we  have  forgotten  to  remember 
how  good  they  are— how  clearly  and  roundly 
realized,  how  winningly  and  artlessly  presented." 
Mr.  Dobson  is  not  one  of  the  biographers  who 
get  their  saint  only  because  they  refuse  to  allow 
free  speech  and  fair  play  to  the  devil's  advocate; 
and  he  appreciates  fully  Voltaire's  saying,  that 
criticism  of  detail  is  never  fatal.  Voltaire  else- 
where asserted  that  the  critic  does  not  know  his 
trade  who  cannot  discover  the  causes  of  a  book's 
success;  and  Mr.  Dobson  has  pointed  out  the  real 
reasons  why  the '  Vicar  of  Wakefield  '  has  pleased 
long  and  pleased  many,  in  spite  of  its  obvious 
shortcomings.  Goldsmith  presented  the  Prim- 
rose family  so  simply  and  so  sympathetically  that 
the  world  was  delighted  to  take  them  to  its  heart, 
notwithstanding  the  clumsiness  of  the  plot  and 
the  staginess  of  many  of  the  personages.  We 
can  now  detect  in  Dr.  Primrose  a  certain  eigh- 
teenth-century attitude  toward  the  established 
order  in  church  and  in  state  which  is  not  pleas- 
ing in  our  nineteenth-century  eyes,  and  which  is 

5> 


NEW   TRIALS   FOR   OLD   FAVORITES 

probably  the  cause  of  Mark  Twain's  contemptu- 
ous accusation  of  "  complacent  hypocrisy  ";  but, 
in  spite  of  this,  the  record  of  the  Vicar's  little 
vanities  and  little  weaknesses  is  not  fatiguing, 
and  the  Vicar  himself  lingers  in  our  memory  as  a 
Christian  gentleman. 

Mark  Twain  is  a  good  workman ;  but  he  is  not 
unwilling  to  carry  one  of  his  chips  on  his  shoul- 
der. He  has  a  hatred  of  humbug  almost  as  hearty 
as  Moliere's,  and  a  scorn  of  hypocrisy  almost  as 
hot;  and  it  may  be  that  he  was  moved  to  this 
violent  outbreak  in  protest  against  the  unthinking 
lip-reverence  with  which  books  like  the  '  Vicar  of 
V^akefield '  are  treated  generally.  Any  one  who 
truly  loves  literature,  and  who  takes  a  real  interest 
in  its  history,  can  hardly  fail  to  be  annoyed  by  the 
superstitious  veneration  paid  to  the  minor  master- 
pieces of  the  past.  They  are  mentioned  with 
bated  breath,  as  though  they  were  flawless  gems, 
to  hint  a  spot  on  which  were  akin  to  sacrilege. 
It  is  the  very  negation  of  criticism  to  act  on  the 
theory  that  even  the  great  poets  were  impecca- 
ble, that  Homer  never  nodded  and  that  Shakspere 
never  slept;  and  a  willingness  to  close  the  eyes 
resolutely  to  all  the  weak  points  in  their  works 
may  lead  in  time  to  an  inability  to  see  where 
their  real  strength  lies.  And  if  it  is  safest  for 
the  honest  critic  not  to  blind  himself  to  the  fact 
that  in  '  Hamlet,'  in  the  fifth  act  especially,  there 


NEW   TRIALS   FOR   OLD   FAVORITES 

are  still  obvious  traces  of  the  earlier  and  inferior 
tragedy-of-blood  upon  which  it  was  founded,  and 
that  in  '  Don  Quixote '  the  pretense  of  a  translated 
manuscript  is  tedious  and  ill  sustained,  so  it  is 
doubly  important  that  the  honest  critic  should 
keep  his  eyes  open  wide  when  he  comes  to  deal 
with  the  lesser  classics,  with  books  like  the '  Vicar 
of  Wakefield'  and  'Gil  Bias'  and  'Paul  and  Virginia' 
—books  each  of  which  has  a  place  of  its  own  in  the 
complex  development  of  the  modern  novel,  but 
for  which  it  is  absurd  to  claim  verbal  inspiration. 
Goldsmith's  domestic  idyl  suggested  Goethe's 
'Hermann  and  Dorothea,'  and,  indirectly,  Long- 
fellow's 'Evangeline.'  Le  Sage's  picaresque 
romance  inspired  Smollett's  robustious  '  Rod- 
erick Random ' ;  it  influenced  Dickens  in  the '  Pick- 
wick Papers'  and  in  'Nicholas  Nickleby';  and  it 
even  provided  an  unconscious  model  for  Mark 
Twain's  'Tom  Sawyer'  and  '  Huckleberry  Finn.' 
Saint-Pierre's  exotic  love-story  revealed  to  later 
novelists  the  possibility  of  making  the  forces  of 
nature— the  flowers  of  the  field  and  the  winds  of 
heaven— play  a  part  in  the  tragedy  of  life.  The 
'  Vicar  of  V^akefield '  and  '  Gil  Bias '  and  '  Paul 
and  Virginia'  are  all  of  them  important  in  the 
history  of  fiction,  for  one  reason  or  another;  but 
they  are  none  of  them  so  mighty  in  their  scope 
that  we  need  be  afraid  to  weigh  their  merits  ex- 
actly and  to  measure  their  faults  with  precision. 

53 


NEW   TRIALS   FOR   OLD   FAVORITES 

We  are  justified  in  insisting  on  a  careful  ex- 
amination, not  only  of  their  credentials  from  the 
past,  but  of  the  works  themselves.  They  come 
to  us  with  the  indorsement  of  preceding  genera- 
tions; but  we  gave  no  preceding  generation  a 
power  of  attorney  to  decide  what  we  should  like 
in  literature,  or  to  declare  what  we  must  admire. 
Every  generation  exercises  the  right  of  private 
judgment  for  itself.  Every  generation  is  a  Court 
of  Appeals,  which  never  hesitates  to  overrule  and 
reverse  the  judgments  of  its  predecessors.  When 
a  book  has  been  praised  since  a  time  whereof 
the  memory  of  man  runneth  not  to  the  contrary, 
the  probability  is  large  that  the  commendation 
Is  deserved.  But  there  is  always  a  possibility 
that  its  reputation  has  been  preserved  merely  be- 
cause the  book  has  become  unreadable  and  has 
thus  tempted  nobody  to  explode  its  inherited 
fame. 

We  have  always  a  right  to  reopen  the  case 
whenever  fresh  evidence  is  discovered.  In  the 
Court  of  Criticism  there  is  no  doctrine  of  stare 
decisis :  precedent  cannot  estop  the  action  of  pos- 
terity. Nothing  is  more  unwholesome  for  a  living 
literature  than  a  willingness  to  accept  a  tradi- 
tion without  question,  blindfold  and  obedient. 
Nothing  is  worse  for  the  welfare  of  a  living  litera- 
ture than  an  acceptance  of  that  maxim  of  Pudd'n'- 
head  Wilson's,  in  which  he  asserts  that  a  classic 

54 


NEW   TRIALS   FOR   OLD   FAVORITES 

is  a  book  everybody  praises  and  nobody  reads, 
unless  it  is  an  acting  upon  the  maxim  of  Samuel 
Rogers,  who  said  that  whenever  a  new  book  came 
out  he  read  an  old  one.  We  need  the  new  and 
the  old;  but  we  need  the  old  for  what  it  is  to  us 
now,  and  not  for  what  it  was  to  readers  of  the 
last  century. 

When  Mr.  Howells  aroused  the  rage  of  the 
British  lion  by  his  innocent  suggestion  that  the 
art  of  fiction  is  a  finer  art  nowadays  than  it  had 
been  in  Thackeray's  time,  he  was,  in  fact,  guilty 
of  an  obvious  commonplace.  Guy  de  Maupas- 
sant may  or  may  not  be  a  better  shot  than  Honore 
de  Balzac,  but  there  is  no  doubt  as  to  the  superi- 
ority of  the  younger  writer's  rifle.  So  Thackeray 
himself  had  a  better  gun  than  Scott;  and  Scott 
could  have  had  a  better  gun  than  Fielding,  al- 
though for  some  reason  he  apparently  preferred 
the  old-fashioned  bow  of  yew  with  its  cloth-yard 
arrow.  No  wonder  is  it,  therefore,  that  some 
readers  of  to-day,  accustomed  to  the  feats  of  long- 
range  marksmanship  made  possible  by  the  latest 
weapons  of  precision,  are  often  impatient  at  the 
results  of  the  target-practice  of  our  ancestors. 

Scott  declared  that  few  have  read  'Gil  Bias' 
"  without  remembering,  as  one  of  the  most  de- 
lightful occupations  of  their  life,  the  time  which 
they  first  employed  in  its  perusal";  and  he  goes 
further,  and  suggests  that  "  if  there  is  anything 

55 


NEW   TRIALS   FOR   OLD   FAVORITES 

like  truth  in  Gray's  opinion,  that  to  lie  upon  a 
couch  and  read  new  novels  was  no  bad  idea  of 
Paradise,  how  would  that  beatitude  be  enhanced 
could  human  genius  afford  us  another  '  Gil 
Bias'!"  Thackeray  asserted  that  "the  novel 
of  'Humphrey  Clinker'  is,  I  do  think,  the  most 
laughable  story  that  has  been  written  since  the 
goodly  art  of  novel-writing  began."  Coleridge 
maintained  that  the  three  finest  plots  in  the  whole 
history  of  literature  were  to  be  found  in  the 
'CEdipus'  of  Sophocles,  the  'Alchemist'  of  Ben 
Jonson,  and  the  '  Tom  Jones  '  of  Fielding. 

Scott  and  Thackeray  and  Coleridge  are  critics 
whose  equipment  and  insight  and  disinterested- 
ness every  lover  of  literature  must  respect.  But 
Coleridge  died  before  the  modern  novel  had 
reached  its  full  development,  and  if  he  over- 
praised the  plot  of  '  Tom  Jones,'  it  was  perhaps 
because  he  could  not  foresee  the  'Scarlet  Letter' 
or  'Smoke.'  No  doubt  Thackeray  relished  the 
eighteenth  century  exceedingly;  but  when  he 
singled  out '  Humphrey  Clinker'  as  a  masterpiece 
of  laughter-making,  he  could  have  had  no  pre- 
monition of '  Tom  Sawyer'  and  of '  Tartarin  on  the 
Alps.'  And  in  like  manner  Scott's  eulogy  of  '  Gil 
Bias '  falls  on  deaf  ears  now  that  it  is  addressed 
t(s  Ihose  who  have  feasted  their  eyes  on  the  far 
more  varied  panorama  provided  in  the  Waverley 
Novels. 

56 


NEW  TRIALS   FOR  OLD   FAVORITES 

Much  of  our  veneration  for  the  classics  is  a 
sham,  the  result,  in  part,  of  our  sheep-like  un- 
willingness to  think  for  ourselves.     Follow-my- 
leader  is  the  game  most  of  us  play  when  we  are 
called  upon  to  declare  our  preferences.     We  put 
'Tom  Jones,'  for  example,  into  our  lists  of  the 
Hundred  Best  Books— lists,  for  the  most  part, 
as  fatuous  as  they  are  absurd;  but  if  we  were 
honest  with  ourselves,  as  I  suppose  we  should  be 
if  the  choice  was  actual,  very  few  of  us  would 
pack  '  Tom  Jones  '  in  the  chest  we  express  to  the 
mythical  desolate  island.     There  is  no  doubt  that 
'  Tom  Jones  '  is  a  great  novel,  one  of  the  greatest 
in  our  language,  and  perhaps  one  of  the  greatest 
in  the  modern  literature  of  any  country.     It  has 
form  and  substance;  it  is  admirably  planned  and 
beautifully  written;  it  abounds  in  humor  and  in 
irony  and  in  knowledge  of  human  nature;  it  is 
peopled  by  a  company  of  living  men  and  women ; 
it  reveals  to  us  a  most  manly  character,  the  char- 
acter of  Henry  Fielding  himself— sturdy,  honest, 
and  sincere,  clear-eyed  and  plain-spoken.     The 
book  is  eternal  in  its  verity,  and  therefore  in  its 
interest;  but  it  has  the  remote  morality  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  and  the  hardness  of  tone  of 
that  unlovely  era;   it  belongs  to  an  earlier  stage 
in  the  development  of  fiction;  it  demands  for  its 
full  enjoyment  a  certain  measure  of  culture  in  its 
readers ;  and  therefore  it  is  becoming  year  by  year 

57 


NEW   TRIALS   FOR   OLD    FAVORITES 

more  and  more  a  novel  for  the  few,  and  less  and 
less  a  novel  for  the  many. 

As  with  '  Tom  Jones  '  so  with  '  Don  Quixote ' 
—a  greater  book,  making  a  wider  appeal,  and  not 
bounded  by  the  horizon  of  a  single  century.  The 
carelessness  with  which  Cervantes  put  his  story 
together,  the  fortuitous  adventures  and  the  in- 
congruous meetings— these  things  are  of  little 
consequence;  for,  as  George  Sand  aptly  put  it, 
"  the  best  books  are  not  those  with  the  fewest 
faults,  but  those  with  the  greatest  merits."  The 
merits  of '  Don  Quixote '  are  great  beyond  dispute ; 
but  are  they  such  as  can  be  appreciated  by  that 
impossible  entity,  the  Average  Reader.?  Spain's 
chivalry  has  been  laughed  away  so  thoroughly 
that  nowadays  a  man  must  needs  have  studied  in 
the  schools  to  understand  the  circumstances  of 
Cervantes's  satire.  The  genuine  appreciation  of 
'Don  Quixote'— and  of  'Tom  Jones'  also— calls 
for  a  preparation  that  few  readers  of  fiction  pos- 
sess, and  for  an  effort  which  few  of  them  are  in- 
clined to  make. 

If  this  is  true,  is  it  not  best  to  admit  it  frankly 
—to  say  honestly  that  the  '  Vicar  of  Wakefield ' 
is  a  tissue  of  improbabilities,  that  Gil  Bias,  in  the 
course  of  his  rambles,  happens  upon  much  that 
is  no  longer  entertaining,  and  that  '  Humphrey 
Clinker'  is  not  the  most  amusing  volume  now 
available  ?    The  penalty  for  not  speaking  the  truth 

58 


NEW   TRIALS   FOR   OLD    FAVORITES 

boldly  is  pretty  serious.  It  consists  in  the  very 
real  danger  that  he  who  is  enticed  by  traditional 
eulogy  to  attempt  these  books  and  others  like 
them,  and  who  recoils  with  disappointment,  as 
many  a  time  he  must,  will  thereafter  distrust  his 
judgment,  and  will  be  inclined  to  suppose  that 
literature  is  something  hard,  something  dull, 
something  repellent,  something  beyond  his  reach. 

When  Mr.  Reed  defined  a  statesman  as  "a  suc- 
cessful politician  who  is  dead,"  he  voiced  a  sen- 
timent very  like  that  which  rules  many  of  our 
literary  guides.  In  their  minds,  nothing  is  litera- 
ture that  was  not  written  either  in  a  dead  language 
or  by  a  dead  man,  and  everything  is  literature 
which  was  written  by  a  dead  man  in  a  dead  lan- 
guage. They  praise  the  old  books  which  they 
either  read  with  an  effort  or  do  not  read  at  all; 
and  it  rarely  occurs  to  them  to  analyze  the  source 
of  their  pleasure  in  the  new  books  which  they 
read  with  joy.  '  Huckleberry  Finn,'  for  example, 
has  been  devoured  with  delight  by  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  Americans ;  but  the  rare  references 
to  it  in  print  are  most  of  them  doubtful  and  pa- 
tronizing. 

Now  '  Huckleberry  Finn  '  contains  the  picture 
of  a  civilization  nowhere  else  adequately  recorded 
in  literature:  it  abounds  in  adventure  and  in  char- 
acter, in  fun  and  in  philosophy.  It  appears  to 
me  to  be  a  work  of  extraordinary  merit,  and  a 

59 


NEW   TRIALS   FOR  OLD   FAVORITES 

better  book  of  the  same  kind  than  'Gil  Bias,' 
richer  in  humor,  and  informed  by  a  riper  human- 
ity. But  Mark  Twain's  story  is  a  book  of  to-day, 
and  it  is  American;  it  is  not  a  book  of  yesterday 
and  foreign;  it  can  be  enjoyed  by  anybody, 
even  by  a  boy,  and  it  seems  to  make  no  demand 
on  the  understanding.  There  is  no  tradition  of 
laudation  encompassing  it  about,  and  it  is  not 
sanctified  by  two  centuries  of  eulogy.  It  is  easy 
for  us  to  read,  since  the  matter  is  familiar  and  the 
manner  also;  but  it  is  difficult  for  us  to  praise, 
since  the  critics  who  preceded  us  have  not  set  us 
the  example. 

Probably  it  was  at  a  new  opera  that  Rufus 
Choate  besought  his  daughter  to  interpret  to  him 
the  libretto,  lest  he  dilate  with  the  wrong  emo- 
tion. At  all  the  old  operas  every  man  of  us  knows 
with  what  emotion  it  is  that  he  ought  to  dilate, 
since  we  are  prone  to  accept  the  tradition,  if  only 
to  save  us  the  trouble  of  thinking  for  ourselves. 
To  arouse  us  from  our  laziness  and  our  lethargy 
there  is  nothing  like  a  vehement  assault  on  the  in- 
herited opinion— even  if  the  charge  is  too  sweep- 
ing, like  Mark  Twain's  annihilation  of  Goldsmith's 
little  masterpiece. 

If  a  study  of  the  history  of  literature  reveals 
anything  clearly,  it  is  that  a  reversal  of  the  judg- 
ments of  our  ancestors,  or  at  least  a  revision,  after 
argument,  is  a  condition  of  progress.      If  the 

60 


NEW   TRIALS   FOR   OLD   FAVORITES 

old  favorites  cannot  stand  a  new  trial,  there  may 
be  a  recommendation  to  mercy;  but  there  is  no 
doubt  about  the  verdict.  For  us  to  advance  in 
the  right  path,  we  must  look  at  literature,  as  we 
look  at  life,  with  our  own  eyes,  and  not  through 
the  spectacles  of  our  grandfathers.  The  critics  of 
the  Renascence  in  every  country  of  Europe  were 
united  in  holding  that  the  model  of  the  drama  had 
been  set  by  the  Greeks  once  for  all,  and  that  this 
model  was  in  no  wise  to  be  modified  or  departed 
from;  and  the  insistence  on  this  theory  deprived 
Italy  of  a  drama  of  its  own,  and  came  desperately 
near  to  strangling  the  drama  of  England  and  that 
of  Spain.  Fortunately,  the  populace  of  London 
and  of  Madrid  were  not  awed  by  the  authority  of 
criticism;  they  knew  what  they  wanted;  they 
refused  to  accept  the  kind  of  play  that  had  pleased 
the  Greeks  but  did  not  happen  to  please  them; 
and  they  would  not  rest  satisfied  till  they  had 
Shakspere  and  Calderon. 

In  the  lapse  of  time  Calderon  and  Shakspere 
got  themselves  slowly  accepted  as  classics,  but 
after  how  hard  a  struggle  in  the  case  of  Shak- 
spere!—a  struggle  ending  in  the  triumph  of  the 
dramatist  only  toward  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century  and  with  the  revival  of  the  romantic. 
No  department  of  literary  history  is,  I  think,  more 
instructive,  and  none,  1  am  sure,  tends  more  to 
teach  us  humility,  than  the  record  of  the  fluctua- 

6\ 


NEW   TRIALS   FOR   OLD    FAVORITES 

tions  in  the  fame  of  one  or  another  of  the  masters 
of  literature— such  a  record  as  Professor  Louns- 
bury  has  given  us  in  one  of  his  luminous  '  Studies 
of  Chaucer.'  Each  of  these  masters  has  had  his 
eclipses,  from  which  he  has  emerged  at  last;  and 
many  of  the  minor  bards  have  had,  each  in  his 
turn,  their  periods  of  effulgence,  now  come  to 
an  end  forever.  For  nearly  a  century  Shakspere 
was  held  to  be  inferior  to  Ben  Jonson ;  and  for  an 
even  longer  period  Homer  was  held  in  lower 
esteem  than  the  smoother  Vergil. 

Two  or  three  hundred  years  ago  the  Italians 
used  to  speak  of  the  Four  Poets,  meaning  Dante, 
Petrarch,  Ariosto,  and  Tasso;  and  in  those  days 
the  rest  of  the  civilized  world  was  ready  enough 
to  admit  the  supremacy  of  this  quartet.  The 
canon  of  to-day  also  admits  four  poets— Homer, 
Dante,  Shakspere,  and  Goethe.  We  who  speak 
English  may  wish  to  add  Milton  as  a  fifth;  they 
who  speak  French  might  claim  admission  for 
Hugo  instead;  while  the  Latins  would  put  in  a 
plea  for  the  inclusion  of  Vergil.  But  how  Vol- 
taire would  have  scoffed  at  any  list  that  included 
the  Gothic  Dante  and  the  barbarian  Shakspere! 
And  how  Voltaire's  followers,  the  little  German 
critics  who  came  before  Lessing,  would  have 
shrieked  with  horror  at  the  omission  of  Pope, 
Boileau,  and  Horace!  I  wonder  sometimes  whe- 
ther some  of  our  opinions— even  those  upon 

62 


NEW   TRIALS   FOR   OLD   FAVORITES 

which  all  the  authoritative  critics  of  our  time  are 
united— will  not  strike  the  more  enlightened 
twenty-first  century  as  equally  jejune.  And  yet  I 
need  not  wonder;  for  few  things  are  more  certain 
to  come  about  than  that  the  future  will  jeer  at 
more  than  one  judgment  of  the  present,  just  as 
we  scoff  haughtily  at  many  of  the  judgments  of 
the  past.  Every  century— even  every  generation 
—contributes  material  for  a  new  chapter  on  the 
vicissitudes  of  artistic  reputation. 

For  a  decade  or  more  Byron  was  universally 
accepted  as  the  foremost  poet  of  all  Europe.  Fifty 
years  later  Byron  was  ranked  by  most  British 
critics  below  Shelley  and  Keats  and  Wordsworth, 
no  one  of  whom  has  ever  had  any  vogue  outside 
of  his  own  language.  Now,  again,  as  the  cen- 
tury draws  to  an  end,  there  are  plentiful  signs  of 
a  revolution  in  Byron's  favor.  But  if  Byron  ever 
reconquers  a  fame  like  that  which  he  possessed 
just  before  his  death,  it  will  be  by  virtue  of  his 
real  qualities  and  not  by  favor  of  accompanying 
faults— although  his  earlier  notoriety  seemed  to 
be  due  almost  as  much  to  the  latter  as  to  the 
former.  In  like  manner  Lamartine  is  regaining 
to-day  in  France  a  position  such  as  he  occupied 
once  before;  only  he  is  solidly  supported  now, 
and  far  better  able  to  repel  assault.  So,  too, 
Victor  Hugo,  against  whom  there  was  a  violent 
reaction  after  his  death,— a  reaction  perhaps  not 

63 


NEW  TRIALS   FOR   OLD    FAVORITES 

yet  at  an  end  in  Paris  itself,— is  coming  slowly 
to  be  recognized,  especially  by  foreign  critics,  as 
the  finest  lyric  poet  of  France,  and  even  as  the 
foremost  lyrist  of  Europe  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. This  recognition  has  been  made  possible 
only  by  the  perspective  of  time,  which  has  re- 
vealed the  '  Legende  des  Siecles '  looming  aloft 
above  the  immense  mass  of  Hugo's  other  verse, 
and  far  above  his  romances  and  his  dramas. 
During  a  man's  lifetime  there  is  a  tendency  to 
estimate  him  by  his  average  work:  after  he  is 
dead  and  gone  a  juster  valuation  is  arrived  at  by 
weighing  only  his  best. 

At  Scott's  death  there  was  an  outburst  of  eu- 
logy—as much  a  testimony  of  admiration  for  the 
final  struggle  of  the  man  as  it  was  an  expression 
of  gratitude  for  the  pleasure  given  by  the  author. 
Soon  the  thermometer  fell,  and  there  were  signs 
of  a  frost.  Then  Lockhart  published  the  biog- 
raphy; and  Carlyle  was  ready  with  a  review,  the 
underlying  tone  of  which  was  the  same  contemp- 
tuous envy  he  showed  toward  almost  every  one 
of  his  successful  contemporaries.  Scott's  merits 
were  real  enough  to  withstand,  on  the  one  side, 
Carlyle's  disparagement,  and,  on  the  other,  the 
discredit  derived  from  a  host  of  clumsy  imitators. 
Yet  he  seems  a  sadly  belated  critic  who  now 
praises  Scott  for  his  tournaments,  or  for  his 
pinchbeck  chivalry,  or  for  any  other  of  the  medie- 

64 


NEW   TRIALS   FOR  OLD   FAVORITES 

val  gauds  which  glittered  so  bravely  in  the  eyes 
of  those  who  read  '  Ivanhoe '  when  it  first  came 
out.  Scott's  title  to  survival  is  seen  at  last  to  be 
founded,  like  the  title  of  Fielding  and  of  Le  Sage 
and  of  Cervantes,  on  his  vigorous  and  veracious 
portrayal  of  human  character,  on  his  truthful 
reproduction  of  the  shrewd  and  sturdy  men 
and  women  whom  he  knew  so  well  and  loved 
so  dearly. 

In  the  same  way  has  the  fame  of  George  Eliot 
and  of  Dickens  wavered  for  a  long  while,  estab- 
lishing itself  more  firmly  as  time  winnows  their 
writings,  leaving  it  to  rest  on  only  the  best  works 
of  each  and  not  merely  on  the  bulk  of  them.  In 
George  Eliot's  case,  '  Daniel  Deronda '  has  already 
been  dropped  behind,  and  no  longer  impedes  the 
full  appreciation  of  'Silas  Marner'— perhaps  the 
only  one  of  her  books  which  is  direct  and  shapely. 
Dickens  had  even  less  sense  of  form  than  George 
Eliot;  and  yet  he  strove  for  constructive  effects 
again  and  again,  only  to  fail  lamentably.  This  is 
one  reason  why  those  of  his  books  are  best  liked 
now  in  which  there  is  little  or  no  pretense  of  a  plot, 
in  which,  in  fact,  there  is  only  a  central  figure  serv- 
ing as  an  excuse  for  the  linking  together  of  amus- 
ing characters  and  lively  scenes.  In  'Nicholas 
Nickleby '  there  is  hardly  any  more  formal  frame- 
work than  there  is  in  'Gil  Bias'  itself;  and  in 
'  Gil  Bias '  the   correlation   of  the  incidents   is 

65 


NEW   TRIALS   FOR   OLD   FAVORITES 

frankly  fortuitous.  In  fact,  '  Nicholas  Nickleby ' 
is  one  of  the  best  specimens  of  the  picaresque  in 
our  language.  For  many  of  us  the  '  Pickwick 
Papers  '  is  the  most  readable  of  Dickens's  works, 
because  it  contains  the  least  plot  and  the  least 
pathos,  and  because  it  was  written  with  the  least 
effort  and  the  least  striving  for  effect. 

Dickens  affords  us  an  admirable  example  of  the 
changing  point  of  view  of  successive  generations. 
In  his  own  day  the  blank-verse  death-beds  of  Little 
Nell  and  Paul  Dombey  were  successful  in  draw- 
ing tears  even  from  unsympathetic  souls  like 
Jeffrey.  In  our  time  these  scenes  annoy  us ;  they 
are  felt  to  be  offensive ;  and  they  are  apologized 
for  even  by  the  thick-and-thin  defenders  of 
Dickens.  So,  too,  the  "  effects  "  which  Dickens 
worked  up  conscientiously  and  with  an  immen- 
sity of  pains  strike  us  to-day  as  tawdry,  not  to  say 
theatrical,  and  we  feel  the  essential  falseness  of 
the  devices  which  Dickens  took  obvious  pride  in. 

What  makes  Mr.  George  Gissing's  recent  study 
of  Dickens's  method  significant  is  the  strange 
frankness  with  which  the  friendly  critic  admits 
the  justice  of  the  accusations  brought  against  the 
earlier  novelist's  art,  and  the  ingenuity  with  which 
he  shows  us  that,  in  spite  of  all,  Dickens's  power 
is  indisputable  and  his  genius  undeniable.  All 
the  characteristics  of  Dickens's  writing  which  Mr. 
Howells  has  expressed  his  distaste  for,  Mr.  Gissing 

66 


NEW  TRIALS   FOR   OLD   FAVORITES 

allows  to  be  execrable;  he  shows  how  Dickens 
yielded  without  a  struggle  to  the  popular  liking 
for  happy  endings,  and  how  he  never  hesitated 
at  the  most  illogical  transmogrification  of  char- 
acter in  order  to  bring  this  about;  and  then  he 
seeks  to  establish  Dickens's  fame  solidly  for  the 
future  on  the  novelist's  veracity  in  dealing  with 
types  of  character  in  the  lower  middle  class  of 
London,  denying  that  Mrs.  Gamp  is  in  any  way 
exaggerated,  calling  her  almost  photographic,  and 
declaring  that  the  reproduction  of  Mrs.  Varden's 
talk  is  phonographic  in  its  accuracy.  Mr.  Gissing 
even  ventures  to  compare  Dickens  with  Balzac, 
with  Victor  Hugo,  with  Dostoyevsky,  and  with 
Daudet,  finding  "  in  Balzac  a  stronger  intellect, 
but  by  no  means  a  greater  genius." 

Mr.  Gissing's  essay  reveals  genuine  insight  into 
the  principles  of  the  novelist's  art;  it  is  modest 
and  moderate;  it  is  convincing.  At  least  one 
reader,  who  would  have  confessed  to  little  liking 
for  Dickens  either  as  a  man  or  as  an  artist,  laid  it 
down  with  the  feeling  that  the  critic  had  made 
out  his  case,  and  that  the  adverse  decision  against 
Dickens  must  needs  be  revised  now  in  the  light 
of  Mr.  Gissing's  argument,  so  cogent  is  this  plea 
of  confession  and  avoidance. 

And  yet  a  doubt  arises  again  when  we  recall 
the  pregnant  saying  of  Joseph  de  Maistre,  that,  to 
judge  a  book,  "  it  is  enough  to  know  by  whom 

67 


NEW   TRIALS   FOR   OLD   FAVORITES 

it  is  loved  and  by  whom  it  is  hated."  Now 
as  between  Dickens  and  Thackeray,— to  bring 
up  again  the  comparison  which  is  apparently 
as  inevitable  as  it  is  absurd,— one  may  have 
a  suspicion  that  the  former  is  more  admired  by 
the  weaklings  and  the  sentimentalists,  by  the 
gently  hypocritical  and  the  morally  short-sighted, 
while  the  latter  pleases  rather  those  who  think  for 
themselves  and  who  stand  firmly  on  their  own 
feet  and  who  take  the  world  as  it  is.  One  robust 
British  critic,  whose  own  manners  are  notoriously 
bad,  seems  to  me  to  prefer  Dickens  chiefly  be- 
cause Thackeray  was  a  gentleman. 

In  comparing  Dickens  with  Victor  Hugo,  Mr. 
Gissing  sets  Inspector  Bucket  by  the  side  of  Javert, 
and  finds  a  realistic  character  in  the  British  de- 
tective, and  a  type  in  the  French,  "  an  incarnation 
of  the  penal  code,  neither  more  nor  less."  Then 
he  declares  that  '  Les  Miserables '  "  is  one  of 
the  world's  great  books,"  and  admits  that  this 
"  cannot  be  said  of  any  one  of  Dickens's."  This 
raises  a  most  interesting  question:  What  are  the 
world's  great  books  ?  Of  course,  the  list  would 
be  drawn  up  very  differently  in  different  countries 
and  in  different  centuries.  The  American  list 
would  not  be  quite  the  same  as  the  British  list, 
although  there  is  identity  of  language  and  of  liter- 
ary tradition.  Either  of  these  English  lists  would 
diverge  widely  from  the  French.     The  Italian  list 

68 


NEW  TRIALS  FOR   OLD  FAVORITES 

and  the  Spanish  would  be  closer  to  the  French, 
and  the  German  list  would  approach  the  English. 
If  a  score  of  competent  critics,  chosen  from  the 
chief  modern  languages,  were  empowered  to 
select  a  dozen  cosmopolitan  classics  there  would 
be  agreement  only  in  regard  to  the  ancients. 
About  the  moderns  there  would  be  the  utmost 
diversity  of  opinion.  No  book  of  Dickens's  would 
be  put  on  the  list,  nor  any  book  of  Thackeray's, 
either,  nor  aught  of  Hawthorne's ;  while  a  volume 
of  Poe's  short  stories  might  perhaps  survive  the 
discussion,  and  so  might  'Uncle  Tom's  Cabin.' 
Perhaps  '  Gil  Bias '  and  '  Paul  and  Virginia '  and 
the  '  Vicar  of  Wakefield '  would  be  able  to  make 
good  their  claims,  and  perhaps  not.  Perhaps, 
indeed,  the  only  books  in  our  language  (except  a 
play  or  two  of  Shakspere's)  that  are  absolutely 
certain  of  insertion  are  the  two  books  of  our  boy- 
hood, '  Gulliver's  Travels '  and  '  Robinson  Crusoe, ' 
both  of  them  tales  of  seafaring,  and  both  of  them 
intimately  characteristic  of  the  stock  that  speaks 
English  on  the  opposite  shores  of  the  Atlantic. 

If  the  malignant  Swift  has  any  knowledge  now 
of  what  is  happening  among  the  descendants  of 
the  men  and  women  he  despised  and  cringed  be- 
fore, it  must  feed  fat  his  humor  that  the  book  he 
wrote  to  record  his  hatred  of  humanity  survives 
to-day  as  a  fairy-tale  in  the  nursery.  He  meant 
it  for  gall  and  wormwood,  and  lo!  it  is  found  to 

69 


NEW   TRIALS   FOR  OLD   FAVORITES 

be  spoon-meat  for  babes.  Books  have  their 
strange  fates,  like  men;  but  surely  none  could 
be  stranger  than  this,  the  very  irony  of  circum- 
stance. 

As  for  *  Robinson  Crusoe,'  its  permanence  can 
be  explained  easily  enough.  M.  de  Vogiie  has 
recently  declared  that  the  list  of  cosmopolitan 
classics  must  finally  be  restricted  to  tv^o  books, 
'Don  Quixote '  and  '  Robinson  Crusoe.'  He  tells 
us  that  "  other  masterpieces  take  higher  rank, 
from  the  perfection  of  their  art  or  from  the  sub- 
limity of  their  thought,  but  they  do  not  address 
themselves  to  every  age  and  to  every  condition ; 
they  demand  for  their  enjoyment  a  mind  already 
formed  and  an  intellectual  culture  not  given  to 
every  one.  Cervantes  and  Defoe  alone  have 
solved  the  problem  of  interesting  .  .  .  the  little 
child  and  the  thoughtful  old  man,  the  servant- 
girl  and  the  philosopher." 

M.  de  Vogue  declares  '  Don  Quixote '  to  be  the 
most  pessimistic  of  books,  and '  Robinson  Crusoe ' 
the  most  optimistic.  He  discovers  in  the  first  the 
whole  history  of  Spain,  and  in  the  latter  the  true 
portrait  of  the  English-speaking  race.  He  sees  in 
the  shipwrecked  solitary  the  type  of  the  mythic 
hero  of  the  north— stout-hearted  and  devout, 
ready  with  his  hands,  and  sure  of  himself. 

That  'Don  Quixote'  is  a  greater  book  than 
'Robinson  Crusoe'  few  would  deny;  but  if  the 

70 


NEW   TRIALS   FOR   OLD   FAVORITES 

cosmopolitan  classics  are  two,  then  is  the  Spanish 
masterpiece  less  cosmopolitan  than  the  English, 
since  its  appeal  is  not  so  universal,  and  to  appre- 
ciate it  calls  for  more  knowledge  and  more  effort. 
A  boy  needs  to  learn  what  knight-errantry  is  be- 
fore he  can  enter  into  sympathy  with  the  hero  of 
Cervantes  and  begin  to  make-believe  with  him. 
But  what  boy  is  there  who  cannot  invent  for 
himself  a  desert  island  and  hostile  savages  ?  De- 
foe's hero  is  a  type  of  all  mankind;  Robinson 
Crusoe's  struggle  for  existence  is  ours  also;  and 
in  his  adventures  we  foresee  our  own— every  man 
fighting  for  his  own  hand,  every  man  with  his 
back  against  the  wall. 
(1898) 


7» 


IV 
THE  STUDY  OF  FICTION 


[This  address  was  prepared,  at  the  request  of  the  American 
Society  for  the  Extension  of  University  Teaching,  to  take  its 
place  in  a  course  of  lectures  on  Books  and  Reading,  delivered 
in  1898-99.] 


THE   STUDY  OF  FICTION 

MANY  of  us  can  remember  a  time— and  a 
time  not  so  very  remote— when  we  would 
have  scouted  as  an  arrant  absurdity  any  sugges- 
tion that  literature  was  to  be  studied.  Without 
giving  thought  to  the  question,  we  held  it  blindly 
as  an  article  of  faith  that  literature  was  for  enjoy- 
ment only  and  for  refreshment;  and  we  may  even 
have  had  a  vague  feeling  that  it  was  not  quite 
solid  enough  to  be  matter  for  study— that  it  was, 
in  fact,  too  entertaining  to  be  taken  seriously.  If 
we  chanced  to  recall  De  Quincey's  suggestive  dis- 
tinction between  the  literature  of  knowledge  and 
the  literature  of  power,  we  might  have  admitted 
that  the  works  belonging  to  the  literature  of 
knowledge— history,  for  example,  and  biogra- 
phy—might well  be  read  with  a  desire  for  self- 
improvement;  but  as  for  the  books  belonging  to 
the  literature  of  power,— poetry  and  the  drama, 
romance  and  the  essay,— these  were  for  recrea- 
tion and  for  pleasure.  They  were  no  more  to 
be  studied  than  a  sunset  or  a  rainbow  or  a  wo- 

75 


THE  STUDY  OF  FICTION 

man's  face  or  anything  else  that  is  beautiful  and 
variable. 

But  of  late  a  change  has  come  over  us,  and  the 
scales  have  fallen  from  our  eyes.  Just  as  we  are 
inquiring  into  the  phenomena  of  the  sunset  and 
the  rainbow,  and  just  as  we  are  classifying  the 
types  of  female  beauty,  so  also  are  we  analyzing 
poetry,  lyric  and  epic  and  tragic,  and  investigating 
the  conditions  of  the  essay  and  of  the  romance. 
The  ballad  serves  as  a  basis  for  research,  and  so 
likewise  does  the  short-story.  A  lilting  legend 
still  gives  us  joy,  no  doubt,  but  our  delight  is  no 
longer  unalloyed.  It  was  Froissart  who  said  that 
our  sturdy  English  ancestors  took  their  pleasure 
sadly;  and  if  there  were  to-day  to  arrive  among 
us  an  observer  as  acute  and  as  sympathetic  as  the 
old  chronicler,  he  might  record  that  now  we  take 
our  pleasure  curiously,  dissecting  our  emotions 
and  seeking  always  to  discover  the  final  cause  of 
our  amusement. 

Sometimes  one  or  another  of  us  may  be  led  to 
wonder  whether  this  later  attitude  is  altogether 
satisfactory,  and  whether  the  new  theory  is  not 
held  a  little  too  rigorously.  There  is  something 
lacking  more  often  than  not  in  our  effort  to  find 
a  scientific  foundation  for  our  artistic  appreciation, 
and  the  attempt  itself  may  even  tend  to  lessen  our 
enjoyment.  We  have  all  seen  editions  of  the 
masterpieces  of  poetry  in   which   notes    have 

76 


THE  STUDY   OF   FICTION 

sprung  up  so  luxuriantly  as  to  threaten  to  choke 
the  life  out  of  the  unfortunate  lyrist.  Diagrams 
have  even  been  devised  to  explain  the  mystery  of 
the  plays  which  plain  people  were  once  able  to 
enjoy  unthinkingly  in  the  theater,  a  place  where 
the  task  of  the  commentator  is  necessarily  super- 
fluous. 

Instead  of  centering  its  attention  on  the  fructi- 
fying kernel,  much  of  the  so-called  teaching  of 
literature  to-day  has  to  do  chiefly  with  barren 
husks,  with  the  mere  dates  of  authors'  biogra- 
phies, and  with  the  external  facts  of  literary  an- 
nals. When  I  see  that  pedants  and  pedagogs 
are  cramming  Milton's  lesser  lyrics  and  Shak- 
spere's  sylvan  dramas  down  the  unwilling  throats 
of  green  boys  and  girls,  I  cannot  but  rejoice  that 
my  own  school-days  were  past  long  before  these 
newer  methods  were  adopted.  Indeed,  I  think 
myself  fortunate  that  I  had  never  studied  litera- 
ture until  I  was  most  unexpectedly  called  upon 
to  teach  it.  I  had  read  freely  for  the  fun  of  it, 
finding  the  labor  its  own  reward,  or  rather  not 
finding  it  labor  at  all;  and  I  had  been  led  to  look 
up  the  lives  of  the  authors  whose  works  interested 
me,  and  to  compare  one  with  another;  but  as  for 
any  formal  study  of  literature,  I  hardly  knew  that 
such  a  thing  was  practised  by  any  one. 

Yet  I  can  see  now,  as  I  look  back  at  my  own 
haphazard  reading,  that  I  might  have  been  saved 

77 


THE  STUDY  OF   FICTION 

much  time,  and  that  my  enjoyment  in  literature, 
keen  as  it  always  was,  might  have  been  sharp- 
ened if  I  had  had  some  guide  to  show  me  the 
lines  along  which  the  drama  and  the  novel  had 
developed,  and  to  suggest  to  me  the  interesting 
relationships  of  the  different  literary  forms— a 
guide  who  could  supply  me  with  reasons  for  the 
preferences  I  had  dumbly  felt,  and  who  might 
even  aid  me  to  combine  these  preferences  into  an 
esthetic  theory  of  my  own,  or  who  could  at  least 
help  me  to  discover  for  myself  the  principles 
underlying  my  preferences.  Useful  as  such  a 
guide  would  be  in  considering  the  essay,  for  in- 
stance, the  history  of  which  has  not  yet  been 
thoroughly  worked  out,  in  no  department  of 
literature  would  he  be  more  useful  than  in  the 
broad  field  of  fiction;  first,  because  the  field  is  so 
very  broad  and  so  sharply  diversified,  and,  sec- 
ondly, because  the  novel  is  still  so  young  that 
there  is  hardly  yet  a  tradition  of  criticism  to  aid 
us  in  the  necessary  classification. 


This  youth  of  the  novel,  as  compared  with  the 
drama,  for  example,  with  oratory,  with  lyric 
poetry,  must  ever  be  borne  in  mind.  There  were 
nine  muses  of  old  in  Greece,  but  to  no  one  of 
them  was  committed  the  care  of  the  novel,  since 

7S 


THE   STUDY   OF   FICTION 

the  making  of  a  fictitious  tale  in  prose  had  not 
yet  occurred  to  any  of  the  Greek  men  of  letters. 
It  is  easy  for  us  to  see  now  that  it  is  a  mere 
accident  whether  a  story  be  told  in  verse  or  in 
prose,  and  that  therefore  the  earliest  of  all  ro- 
mances of  adventure  is  the  '  Odyssey,'  the  bold 
and  crafty  Ulysses  being  thus  the  legitimate 
ancestor  of  Gil  Bias  the  unscrupulous  and  of 
D'Artagnan  the  invulnerable.  The  art  of  the 
story-teller  is  ancient  and  honorable;  but  prose 
lags  long  after  verse,  and  when  our  remote  pro- 
genitor, the  cave-dweller,  anticipated  the  Athe- 
nian in  liking  to  hear  and  to  tell  some  new  thing, 
it  was  in  rime  that  he  told  it,  though  it  might  be 
only  his  own  boastful  autobiography.  Even  after 
the  revival  of  letters,  when  Boccaccio  and  Chau- 
cer rivaled  one  another  in  delicate  perfection  of 
narrative  art,  the  Englishman  chose  verse  often 
to  tell  the  selfsame  story  for  which  the  Italian 
had  preferred  prose;  and  it  was  the  unrhythmic 
*  Vicar  of  Wakefield '  which  suggested  the  met- 
rical 'Hermann  and  Dorothea,'  just  as  the  still 
earlier  '  Daphnis  and  Chloe '  in  prose  may  have 
been  in  some  measure  the  model  of  the  later 
'  Evangeline '  in  verse. 

The  modern  novel  in  prose  may  almost  be  called 
a  creature  of  the  nineteenth  century.  In  many  of 
its  developmiCnts  it  is  a  thing  of  yesterday,  and 
we  do  not  yet  quite  know  how  to  take  it.     Even 

79 


THE  STUDY   OF   FICTION 

now  distinctions  as  essential  as  that  between  the 
novel  and  the  romance  and  that  between  the  novel 
and  the  short-story  are  imperfectly  seized  by  many 
of  those  who  discuss  the  art  of  fiction, 

I  was  about  to  declare  that  the  novel  is  like  a 
younger  brother  who  has  gone  forth  to  make  his 
way  in  the  world,  and  who  has  returned  at  last, 
wealthier  by  far  than  any  of  his  elders  who  have 
lived  leisurely  by  the  family  hearth.  But  this 
figure  limps  a  little;  indeed,  I  must  confess  that 
it  is  both  inadequate  and  inaccurate.  The  novel 
is  rather  the  heir  of  the  ages,  rich  not  only  with 
the  fortune  of  his  father,  but  having  received  also 
legacies  from  various  elderly  relatives,  old  maids 
most  of  them.  The  novel  has  taken  the  heritage 
of  the  epic,  and  it  is  engaged  in  a  hot  dispute 
with  the  serious  drama  for  the  possession  of  what 
little  property  moribund  tragedy  may  have  to 
bequeath.  It  has  even  despoiled  the  essay  of  the 
character-sketch ;  and  it  has  laid  violent  hands  on 
the  fountain  of  personal  emotion  formerly  the 
sole  property  of  the  lyric.  Not  content  with  thus 
robbing  poetry  and  the  drama,  the  novel  vaunts 
itself  as  a  rival  of  history  in  recording  the  great 
deeds  of  the  past;  and  it  also  claims  the  right  to 
wield  the  weapons  of  oratory  in  discussing  the 
burning  questions  of  the  present.  In  fact,  fiction, 
at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century,  may  be 
likened  to  Napoleon  at  the  very  height  of  his 

80 


THE  STUDY   OF   FICTION 

power,  when  no  other  monarch  could  make  sure 
of  resting  in  peace  upon  the  throne  of  his  fathers. 
This  is  perhaps  the  most  striking  fact  in  the 
history  of  the  literature  of  the  nineteenth  century 
—this  immense  vogue  of  the  novel  and  of  the 
short-story.  Fiction  fills  our  monthly  magazines, 
and  it  is  piled  high  on  the  counters  of  our  book- 
stores. Dr.  Holmes  once  said  that  during  the 
Civil  War  the  cry  of  the  American  populace  was 
for  "bread  and  the  newspapers."  It  would  be 
an  exaggeration,  of  course,  to  say  that  during 
periods  of  peace  the  cry  of  the  fairer  half  of  our 
population  is  for  "  clothes  and  the  novel,"  but  it 
is  an  exaggeration  only;  it  is  not  a  misrepresen- 
tation. Almost  every  year  brings  forth  a  story 
which  has  the  surprising  sale  of  a  quarter  of  a 
million  copies  or  more,  while  it  is  only  once  in  a 
lifetime  that  a  work  in  any  other  department  of 
literature  achieves  so  wide  a  circulation.  Of  late 
years  there  has  been  only  one  Grant's  '  Personal 
Memoirs  '  to  set  off  against  a  score  of  stories  like 
'Called  Back,'  like  'Mr.  Barnes  of  New  York,' 
like  '  Trilby ' ;  and  the  sale  of  the  great  leader's 
autobiography  has  not  been  the  half  of  that  of  a 
novel  written  by  one  of  the  generals  who  served 
under  him.  In  the  past  quarter  of  a  century  no 
essay  in  political  economy  (with  the  possible 
exception  of '  Progress  and  Poverty ')  has  really 
rivaled  the  circulation  attained  by  '  Looking  Back- 

8i 


THE  STUDY   OF   FICTION 

ward ' ;  and  no  theological  treatise  (with  the  pos- 
sible exception  of  the  '  Greatest  Thing  in  the 
World ')  has  had  a  tithe  of  the  readers  '  Robert 
Elsmere '  had. 

It  was  a  primitive  Scotchman  who  wanted  to 
write  the  songs  of  a  nation  rather  than  its  laws; 
and  even  in  our  more  advanced  civilization  we  can 
understand  the  wish,  although  it  is  perhaps  easier 
for  us  Americans  to  be  proud  of  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States  merely  as  literature  than  of 
'  Yankee  Doodle '  or  of  the  '  Star-Spangled  Ban- 
ner.' But  in  these  days,  when  few  know  how 
to  sing  and  all  know  how  to  read,  the  story  may 
be  more  potent  than  the  lyric.  When  Mrs.  Stowe 
visited  the  White  House,  Lincoln  bent  over  her, 
saying,  "  And  is  this  the  little  woman  who  made 
this  big  war  ?  "  A  few  years  later  the  Czar  told 
Turgenieff  that  the  freeing  of  the  serfs  was  the 
result  of  thoughts  aroused  in  the  autocrat  of 
Russia  by  the  reading  of  the  novelist's  story. 

No  doubt  the  effect  of  '  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin ' 
has  been  equaled  only  by  that  of  the  '  Memoirs  of 
a  Sportsman. '  But  the  influence  of  many  another 
novel  has  been  both  wide  and  deep.  The  fiction 
which  abides  has  been  patterned  after  life,  and  in 
its  turn  it  serves  as  a  model  to  the  living  men  and 
women  who  receive  it  eagerly.  The  shabby 
heroes  of  Balzac  found  many  imitators  in  Paris 
in  the  middle  of  this  century,  just  as  the  rakish 


THE  STUDY   OF   FICTION 

heroes  of  Byron  had  found  many  imitators  in 
London  at  the  beginning  of  the  century.  The 
interaction  of  life  on  literature,  and  of  literature 
again  on  life,  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  of 
phenomena  for  the  student  of  social  development ; 
and  its  importance  is  seen  more  clearly  since  the 
French  psychologist  M.  Tarde  has  formulated 
what  he  terms  the  Law  of  Imitation,  and  since 
he  has  revealed  how  immense  and  how  far-reach- 
ing is  the  force  of  an  example  placed  conspicu- 
ously before  men's  eyes  as  a  model.  Plainer  than 
ever  before  is  the  duty  of  the  novelist  now  to  set 
up  no  false  ideals,  to  erect  no  impossible  stan- 
dards of  strength  or  courage  or  virtue,  to  tell  the 
truth  about  life  as  he  sees  it  with  his  own  eyes. 

II 

There  are  various  ways  in  which  the  study  of 
fiction  may  be  approached.  We  may  consider 
chiefly  the  contents  of  the  book,  its  pictures  of 
life  and  of  manners,  its  disclosure  of  human  char- 
acteristics and  of  national  peculiarities;  we  may 
devote  our  attention  rather  to  the  form  in  which 
the  story  is  cast,  the  way  it  is  told,  the  methods 
of  the  narrator;  or  we  may  enlarge  our  views  to 
cover  the  history  of  the  art  of  fiction  as  it  slowly 
broadens  down  from  precedent  to  precedent,  re- 
cording carefully  the  birth  of  every  new  species. 

83 


THE  STUDY  OF   FICTION 

In  the  first  case  we  should  find  a  fertile  field  of 
inquiry  if  we  sought  to  test  the  fulness  and  the 
accuracy  with  which  race-characteristics  are  re- 
corded in  the  fiction  of  a  language— how  the  en- 
ergy and  the  humor  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  stock 
dominate  the  novels  of  the  English  language; 
how  the  logic  and  the  clearness  and  the  wit  of 
the  French  people  are  represented  in  French  fic- 
tion; and  how  the  diffuseness,  the  dreaminess, 
and  the  sentimentality  of  the  Germans  charac- 
terize German  romance.  In  the  second  case, 
there  would  be  instructive  matter  for  comparison 
in  setting  side  by  side  the  mock-epic  style  of 
Fielding,  the  confidential  attitude  of  Sterne  and 
Thackeray,  and  the  impassive  manner  of  Flau- 
bert and  Maupassant.  And  in  the  third  case,  we 
should  find  ourselves  facing  many  interesting 
questions:  Who  invented  the  detective  story.? 
Who  wrote  the  first  sea-tale  ?  What  is  the  ear- 
liest novel  with  a  purpose  ?  What  is  the  origin 
of  the  historical  novel  ?  Who  first  made  use  of 
the  landscape  and  of  the  weather  as  sustaining 
accompaniments  of  a  story  ?  How  and  when 
has  the  fiction  of  the  English  language  been  in- 
fluenced by  the  fiction  of  the  Italian,  the  Spanish, 
and  the  French  ?  And  how  and  when  has  it  in 
turn  affected  the  story-telling  of  other  tongues  ? 
How  far  are  the  range  and  the  precision  of  the 
modern  novel  due  to  these  indefatigable  interna- 

84 


THE  STUDY  OF   FICTION 

tional  rivalries  and  to  the  interaction  of  various 
literatures  one  on  the  other  ? 

Of  these  three  ways  of  approach,  perhaps  the 
most  satisfactory  is  the  third,  the  historical;  for 
it  can  easily  be  made  to  yield  most  of  the  ad- 
vantages of  the  others.  No  one  has  yet  v^^ritten 
an  adequate  history  of  the  development  of  the 
modern  novel;  but  the  material  for  an  analysis 
of  this  most  interesting  evolution  is  abundant 
and  accessible.  Starting  with  the  ill-told  anec- 
dotes of  the  '  Gesta  Romanorum,'  on  the  one 
hand,  and  on  the  other  with  the  high-flown  ro- 
mances of  chivalry,  both  of  them  frankly  unreada- 
ble to-day,  we  can  see  how  in  Italy  the  former 
supplied  the  seed  for  the  fully  ripe  tales  of  the 
'Decameron,'  and  how  in  Spain  the  latter  sug- 
gested by  reaction  the  low-life  narratives,  those 
rambhng  autobiographies  of  thieves  and  beggars 
which  are  known  as  the  picaresque  romances, 
and  which  served  as  a  model  for '  Gil  Bias.'  We 
can  trace  the  steps  whereby  the  simplified  figures 
of  Boccaccio— mere  masks  of  a  Priest,  a  Husband, 
a  Wife,  for  instance,  labeled  rather  than  individ- 
ualized, existing  solely  for  the  sake  of  the  adven- 
tures in  which  they  are  involved,  and  moving  as 
though  in  a  vacuum  with  no  effort  to  surround 
themselves  with  an  atmosphere— are  succeeded 
by  the  more  complicated  creatures  of  Le  Sage, 
with  their  recognizable  human  weaknesses. 

85 


THE  STUDY   OF   FICTION 

We  can  note  how  slow  was  the  growth  of  the 
desire  for  unity  when  we  remark  that  master- 
pieces like  '  Don  Quixote  '  and  'Tom  Jones  '  are 
each  of  them  dilated  and  enfeebled  by  the  injec- 
tion of  extraneous  stories,  supposed  to  be  told  by 
one  of  the  characters  and  needlessly  arresting  the 
flow  of  the  main  narrative.  We  can  discover  how 
even  to-day,  when  the  beauty  of  unity  is  acknow- 
ledged, we  have  still  two  contrasting  forms,  and 
how  a  novel  may  now  either  be  Greek  in  its  sim- 
plicity, its  swiftness,  its  directness,  as  the  '  Bride 
of  Lammermoor'  is,  and  the  'Scarlet  Letter,' 
and  '  Smoke,'  with  the  interest  centered  in  one  or 
two  or  three  characters  only;  or  it  may  be  Eliza- 
bethan rather,  with  a  leisurely  amplitude,  peopled 
with  many  characters,  such  as  we  see  in  the 
'Heart  of  Midlothian,'  in  'Vanity  Fair,'  and  in 
'Anna  Karenina.' 

The  historical  study  of  fiction  affords  us  an 
opportunity  for  interesting  investigations  into 
what  may  be  called  literary  genealogy— the  in- 
quiry as  to  the  exact  value  of  the  inheritance  each 
of  the  novelists  received  from  his  immediate  pre- 
decessors and  as  to  which  particular  predecessor 
it  was  of  whom  he  is  the  chief  heir.  Consciously 
or  unconsciously,  every  artist  is  a  debtor  to  the 
past.  The  most  original  of  innovators  has  made 
his  originality  partly  out  of  himself,  partly  out 
of  what  he  has  appropriated  and  absorbed  from 

86 


THE  STUDY   OF   FICTION 

those  who  practised  his  art  before  him.  Only  a 
few  of  his  separate  contrivances  are  his  own,  and 
the  most  he  may  claim  is  a  patent  on  the  combi- 
nation. Now  it  is  not  without  instruction  for 
us  to  disentangle  the  new  from  the  old,  and  to 
ascertain  whence  each  of  the  novelists  derived 
this  or  that  device  of  which  he  has  made  effec- 
tive use. 

Every  artist  studies  in  the  studio  of  one  or  more 
of  his  elders,  and  it  is  there  that  he  picks  up  the 
secrets  of  his  art  and  receives  the  precious  tra- 
ditions of  the  craft.  The  novice  may  be  abso- 
lutely unHke  his  master;  but  he  must  begin  by 
doing  what  his  master  tells  him  to  do;  and  it  is 
only  after  he  has  learned  his  trade  that  he  knows 
enough  to  try  to  develop  his  own  individuality. 
And  so  we  see  how  it  is  that  the  great  Michel- 
angelo was  a  student  under  Ghirlandajo,  who 
was  not  great,  and  how  Botticelli  profited  by  the 
instruction  of  Fra  Filippo  Lippi,  who  had  studied 
under  Masaccio,  who  had  for  his  master  Maso- 
lino;  and  it  is  instructive  for  the  student  of  the 
history  of  painting  to  know  also  that  Giulio  Ro- 
mano was  the  pupil  of  Raphael,  who  was  the 
pupil  of  Perugino,  who  was  the  pupil  of  Nicolo 
da  Foligno,  who  was  the  pupil  of  Benozzo  Goz- 
zoli,  who  was  the  pupil  of  Fra  Angelico,  who 
although  not  a  pupil  was  a  follower  of  Giotto, 
who  was  a  pupil  of  Cimabue.     Thus,  and  thus 

87 


THE  STUDY   OF   FICTION 

only,  can  the  indispensable  technic  be  passed 
down  from  generation  to  generation,  every  man 
handing  on  the  accumulation  he  has  received,  in- 
creasing it  by  his  own  contribution.  The  young 
artist  is  a  weakling  if  he  openly  robs  any  single 
one  of  his  predecessors;  he  is  a  dolt  if  he  does 
not  borrow  from  as  many  of  them  as  may  have 
the  separate  qualities  he  is  striving  to  combine. 

The  arts  are  one  in  reality ;  and  what  is  true  of 
painting  and  sculpture  and  architecture  is  true  also 
of  literature— of  prose  and  verse.  For  example, 
there  are  few  men  of  letters  of  our  time  whose 
prose  has  been  more  praised  for  its  freshness  and 
its  individuality  than  the  late  Robert  Louis  Steven- 
son; but  his  was  an  originality  compounded  of 
many  simples.  He  confessed  frankly  that  he  had 
sat  at  the  feet  of  the  masters,  playing  the  "  sedu- 
lous ape"  to  a  dozen  or  more,  and  at  last  slowly 
learning  how  to  be  himself.  Again,  the  verse  of 
Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti  has  a  note  of  its  own,  a 
note  which  many  younger  poets  have  delighted 
to  echo  and  reecho;  but  Rossetti  told  a  friend 
that  the  exciting  cause  of  his  '  Blessed  Damozel ' 
was  the  '  Raven '  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe;  and  Poe's 
own  indebtedness  to  Coleridge  is  obvious  even 
if  it  had  not  been  expressly  avowed. 

In  literature  as  in  life,  it  is  a  wise  child  that 
knows  its  own  father;  and  the  family-tree  of 
fiction  is  not  easy  to  trace  in  all  its  roots  and 

88 


THE  STUDY   OF   FICTION 

branches.  Certain  types  persist  from  one  gen- 
eration to  another.  We  have  no  hesitation  in 
declaring  that  the  author  of  the  '  Master  of  Ballan- 
trae '  had  for  his  grandfathers  in  story-telling  the 
author  of  'Guy  Mannering'  and  the  author  of 
the  'Three  Musketeers ';  and  we  may  even  ven- 
ture to  believe  that  the  young  Scotchman  who 
wrote  '  Treasure  Island '  was  a  literary  nephew 
of  the  American  who  wrote  the  '  Gold  Bug '  and 
a  great-grandnephew  of  the  Englishman  who 
wrote  'Robinson  Crusoe.'  Sometimes  we  can 
pick  out  a  novelist  who  is  the  remote  descendant 
of  a  series  of  international  marriages.  The  Italian 
Signor  Gabriele  d'Annunzio,  for  example,  came 
forward  first  as  a  writer  of  fiction  with  a  story 
which  had  obviously  been  inspired  by  a  study  of 
the  psychologic  subtleties  of  the  Frenchman  M. 
Paul  Bourget.  But  M.  Bourget's  first  novel  was 
obviously  modeled  upon  the  delicate  work  of  Mr. 
Henry  James,  to  whom,  indeed,  it  was  dedicated 
as  to  a  master.  Now  the  earlier  tales  of  the 
American  novelist  were  plainly  written  under  the 
influence  of  a  Russian,  Ivan  Turgenieff.  As  a 
whole,  Signor  d'Annunzio's  writings  are  very 
different  from  M.  Bourget's,  and  M.  Bourget's 
from  Mr.  James's,  and  Mr.  James's  from  Tur- 
genieff's;  but  none  the  less  the  line  of  filiation  is 
clearly  to  be  perceived.  Of  course  there  is  here 
intended  no  suggestion  of  unfair  imitation,  still 

89 


THE  STUDY   OF   FICTION 

less  of  vulgar  plagiarism ;  the  desire  is  merely  to 
show  how  each  of  these  accomplished  artists  in 
fiction  served  his  apprenticeship  in  the  workshop 
of  an  elder  craftsman.  In  literature  there  are  very 
few  self-made  men. 

As  it  happens,  these  four  nineteenth-century 
novelists  have  a  strong  family  likeness ;  they  are 
of  kin  spiritually;  they  are  all  of  them  far  more 
interested  in  the  subtle  workings  of  the  mind  of 
man  than  in  any  overt  actions  of  his  body.  It 
would  not  be  difficult,  however,  to  find  another 
group,  linked  together  in  like  manner,  in  which 
there  is  marked  opposition  between  the  succes- 
sive authors,  the  younger  availing  themselves  of 
the  technical  devices  of  their  masters,  but  turning 
these  to  totally  different  uses.  For  example,  no 
writer  of  his  years  has  a  more  vigorous  freshness 
than  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling;  none  has  shown 
originality  in  more  diverging  lines  than  he.  Yet 
Mr.  Kipling's  first  tales  from  the  Indian  hills 
reveal  plainly  the  strong  impression  left  on  his 
youthful  genius  by  the  Californian  stories  of  Mr. 
Bret  Harte;  and  the  style  at  least  of  Mr.  Bret 
Harte's  earlier  stories  showed  how  forcibly  he 
had  been  affected  by  Charles  Dickens.  Now 
Dickens  has  recorded  that  his  own  earlier  sketches 
were  deliberately  cast  in  the  mold  supplied  by 
Smollett  in  his  robust  comic  portraitures;  and 
Smollett,  in  the  preface  of  one  of  his  novels,  has 

90 


THE  STUDY   OF   FICTION 

avowed  his  emulation  of  Le  Sage.  But '  Gil  Bias ' 
is  an  adroit  arrangement  of  material  from  Spanish 
sources  according  to  the  model  set  by  the  authors 
of  '  Lazarillo  de  Tormes '  and  '  Guzman  de  Al- 
farache,'  the  original  picaresque  romances.  Be- 
tween these  picaresque  romances  and  '  Gil  Bias ' 
and  Smollett's  full-blooded  and  coarse-grained 
fictions  there  are  many  points  of  resemblance; 
but  Dickens,  even  in  the  rougher  farcical  tales  of 
his  youth,  is  not  to  be  classed  with  them;  Mr. 
Bret  Harte's  work,  as  a  whole,  exhibits  no  close 
similarity  to  Dickens's;  and  Mr.  Rudyard  Kip- 
ling's, as  a  whole,  exhibits  no  likeness  at  all  to 
either  Dickens's  or  Mr.  Bret  Harte's. 

Sometimes  the  literary  ancestry  of  an  author 
is  mixed,  and  he  is  not  merely  a  chip  of  the  old 
block  and  not  quite  the  image  of  his  father,  but 
has  traits  inherited  from  his  mother  also,  and 
from  a  dozen  other  progenitors,  maternal  and 
paternal.  Mr.  Howells  is  an  instance  of  this 
felicitous  cross-breeding,  and  he  can  trace  his 
descent  from  ancestors  as  different  as  Henry 
Heine  and  Jane  Austen,  Turgenieff  and  Tolstoy. 
Sometimes  an  author  of  our  time  throws  back  to 
a  remote  forefather;  the  skeleton  of '  Huckleberry 
Finn,'  for  example,  is  loosely  articulated  like  the 
skeleton  of  '  Gil  Bias,'  although  Mark  Twain  once 
told  me,  when  1  drew  his  attention  to  this,  that 
he  had  absolutely  no  recollection  of  Le  Sage's 

9» 


THE  STUDY   OF   FICTION 

Story  and  certainly  no  predilection  for  it.  The 
form  here  is  the  picaresque  form,  which  has  for 
its  hero  some  humble  and  hopelessly  unheroic 
figure,  before  whose  wondering  eyes  more  or  less 
of  the  strange  panorama  of  life  is  slowly  unrolled. 
From  '  Gil  Bias  '  to  *  Huckleberry  Finn  '  the  line  is 
long,  runningthrough' Roderick  Random" and  the 
'  Pickwick  Papers '  and  more  than  one  of  Marryat's 
happy-go-lucky  narratives.  Indeed,  the  laxly 
knit  tale  of  this  type  is  likely  always  to  be  attrac- 
tive to  the  story-teller,  as  it  releases  the  author 
from  any  obligation  to  construct  a  logical  plot, 
and  as  it  allows  him  to  utilize  immediately  any 
striking  situation  he  may  invent  or  any  strange 
character  he  may  meet. 

Ill 

As  the  only  unity  the  picaresque  romance  can 
have  is  due  to  the  fact  that  a  certain  character  has 
been  a  spectator  of  the  various  scenes  or  an  actor 
in  the  various  adventures,  this  character  is  gen- 
erally allowed  to  tell  the  story  himself,  and  the  tale 
takes  the  shape  of  an  autobiography.  The  auto- 
biography and  the  history— these  are  the  two 
usual  methods  of  communicating  to  the  reader 
the  events  in  which  his  interest  is  to  be  aroused; 
either  one  of  the  characters  tells  the  tale  in  the 
first  person  or  else  the  author  tells  it  himself  in 

92 


THE   STUDY   OF   FICTION 

the  third  person.  There  are  other  methods,  of 
course.  The  story  may  be  cast  in  the  form  of  a 
diary  kept  by  one  of  the  characters,  recording 
events  from  day  to  day,  and  revealing  in  this  act 
his  feelings  at  the  moment  of  making  the  entry; 
the  method  of  the  contemporaneous  autobiog- 
raphy, this  might  be  called,  and  it  has  been  em- 
ployed skilfully  by  Mr.  Paul  Leicester  Ford  in  his 
'Story  of  an  Untold  Love.'  Or  the  author  may 
suppress  everything  except  what  his  people  say 
to  one  another,  cutting  his  story  down  to  dia- 
logue only,  with  but  summary  indication  either 
of  actual  action  or  of  unexpressed  feeling.  This 
semi-dramatic  method  has  been  developed  in 
France  of  late  by  half  a  dozen  clever  writers, 
under  the  lead  of  the  lady  who  calls  herself 
"Gyp,"  and  it  has  been  employed  by  Mr.  Rudyard 
Kipling  in  the  '  Story  of  the  Gadsbys. '  Or  certain 
of  the  characters  may  exchange  letters— which 
is  a  very  leisurely  way  of  affording  us  the  infor- 
mation we  are  seeking.  But  this  method  has 
its  advantage,  if  the  center  of  interest  is  not  so 
much  in  what  happened  as  in  how  these  happen- 
ings affected  the  several  actors— as  in  Smollett's 
'Humphrey  Clinker,'  for  example,  and  in  Mr. 
James's  'Bundle  of  Letters,'  much  of  the  humor 
of  these  pleasantries  arising  from  the  unconscious 
self-revelation  of  different  characters  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  same  fact.    On  the  other  hand,  modern 

9^ 


THE  STUDY   OF   FICTION 

readers  find  it  an  immense  weariness  to  be  forced 
to  go  through  all  the  outlying  formulas  of  epis- 
tolary art,  when  the  theme  itself  is  emotion  pure 
and  simple— as  in  Richardson's  '  Clarissa  Har- 
lowe,'  which  is  to-day  left  unread  partly  because 
of  the  intolerable  sluggishness  of  its  telling. 
Wilkie  Collins  found  it  profitable  elaborately  to 
combine  letters  and  diaries  and  statements  of  this 
character  and  that,  thus  keeping  up  an  incessant 
cross-fire  of  suggestions  and  suspicions  under 
cover  of  which  the  ultimate  secret  might  lie  con- 
cealed a  little  longer.  Two  young  friends  of 
mine,  in  the  wantonness  of  inventive  exuberance, 
once  pieced  together  a  coherent  story  out  of  race- 
cards,  play-bills,  pawn-tickets,  newspaper  para- 
graphs, advertisements,  telegrams,  and  a  few 
letters,  without  a  single  line  of  direct  narrative. 
This  ingenuity  is  well  enough  once  in  a  way,  but 
in  the  long  run  there  is  no  doubt  that  it  is  worse 
than  wasted.  In  the  art  of  the  story-teller,  as  in 
any  other  art,  the  less  the  mere  form  is  flaunted 
in  the  eyes  of  the  beholder  the  better.  The 
simpler  the  manner  of  telling  the  story,  the  more 
attention  will  the  reader  be  able  to  bestow  upon 
the  matter.  So  we  find  that  the  most  of  the 
great  novels  of  the  world  are  singularly  free  from 
intricacies  of  composition,  and  that  in  them  the 
story  is  set  forth  directly  either  by  one  of  the 
characters  or  by  the  author  himself. 

94 


THE  STUDY  OF  FICTION 

Probably  the  autobiographic  form  is  earlier  than 
the  narrative  in  the  third  person.  As  Mr.  Kipling 
once  suggested  to  me  when  we  were  discussing 
the  question,  primitive  man  assumes  no  mod- 
esty, but  is  frankly  vainglorious,  rejoicing  in  his 
own  prowess  and  delighting  to  vaunt  himself. 
"  I  did  it,"  he  cries,  "  alone  I  did  it;  1  seized  him, 
I  smote  him,  I  slew  him— with  my  own  right 
hand  I  slew  him!"  And  even  now  there  is  an 
almost  irresistible  tendency  to  boast  when  a  man 
is  talking  about  himself.  Henry  Esmond  is  as 
modest  as  he  is  manly,  but  we  discover  that  he 
is  aware  of  his  own  merits.  Barry  Lyndon  is 
outrageously  self-laudatory,  which  does  not  pre- 
vent our  perceiving  that  he  is  an  unmitigated 
scoundrel.  In  these  two  masterpieces  Thackeray 
uses  the  autobiographic  form  with  perfect  suc- 
cess; but  when  he  employs  Arthur  Pendennis  to 
unravel  for  us  the  family  history  of  the  New- 
comes,  we  cannot  but  think  he  is  less  felicitous. 
The  personality  of  Pendennis  is  out  of  place  in 
the  later  story,  and  his  presence  is  distracting; 
besides,  we  are  compelled  to  ask  ourselves  more 
than  once  how  it  is  that  Pendennis  knows  all  the 
secrets  of  the  highly  respectable  family,  and  we 
do  not  enjoy  the  suspicion  that  he  must  have 
employed  detectives  or  listened  at  the  keyhole. 

Nine  times  out  of  ten  the  simplest  form  is  the 
best,  the  plain  narrative  in  the  third  person  by  the 

95 


THE   STUDY   OF   FICTION 

author,  who  is  supposed  to  be  ubiquitous  and 
omniscient,  having  seen  everything,  heard  every- 
thing, and  remembered  everything.  The  modern 
novelist,  Mr.  Howells  once  reminded  me,  is  the 
direct  heir  of  the  epic  poet,  who  knew  all  things 
because  he  was  inspired  by  the  muse  herself,  her 
aid  having  been  duly  invoked  at  the  beginning. 
The  most  accomplished  artists  in  fiction  are  the 
French,  and  they  very  rarely  use  any  but  the  plain 
narrative ;  and  this  has  been  preferred  also  by  Tur- 
genieff  in  Russia  and  by  Hawthorne  in  America, 
with  that  unerring  instinct  which  makes  them  the 
despair  of  less  gifted  story-tellers.  Turgenieff 
even  managed  to  endow  his  plain  narrative  with 
some  of  the  advantage  of  the  autobiography, 
singling  out  one  of  his  characters,  analyzing  this 
one's  feelings  only,  and  telling  us  always  how 
the  other  characters  affected  this  one. 


IV 

It  may  seem  to  some  that  I  am  lingering  too 
long  over  questions  of  technic,  to  which  few 
readers  of  fiction  ever  give  a  thought,  being  in- 
terested in  the  events  of  the  story,  in  the  people 
who  carry  it  on,  in  what  is  felt  and  said  and  done, 
rather  than  in  the  way  in  which  it  happens  to  be 
told.  But  a  certain  understanding  of  technic  is 
a  first  requisite  for  any  adequate  appreciation  of 

q6 


THE  STUDY   OF   FICTION 

an  art;  and  the  technic  of  the  art  of  the  novelist 
is  now  singularly  rich  and  varied  and  worthy  of 
consideration.  In  our  English-speaking  commu- 
nity there  is  no  danger  that  too  much  attention 
will  be  paid  to  matters  of  craftsmanship.  In  art 
we  tend  to  be  slovens,  attaining  our  aim  rather 
by  an  excessive  expenditure  of  energy  than  by 
adroit  husbanding  of  force.  The  ordinary  British 
novel  is  a  sprawling  invertebrate— not  to  call  it 
an  inorganic  conglomerate.  Even  the  works  of 
the  British  masters  are  often  almost  amorphous— 
the  '  Mutual  Friend  '  for  one  and  '  Middlemarch  ' 
for  another,  both  of  which  disclose  an  astound- 
ing disregard  for  the  principles  of  composition. 
'  Vanity  Fair '  has  two  separate  stories  arbitrarily 
conjoined— the  one  recording  the  rise  and  fall  of 
Becky  Sharp,  and  the  other  dealing  with  the  two 
wooings  of  Amelia. 

When  we  turn  from  technic  to  theme,  from 
the  manner  of  telling  to  the  matter  of  the  tale, 
there  are  many  aspects  of  fiction  inviting  atten- 
tion, and  there  are  not  a  few  questions  of  the 
hour  upon  which  light  can  be  thrown  by  an  ex- 
amination of  the  novels  of  the  day.  For  example, 
there  is  incessant  discussion  about  the  equality 
of  the  sexes  and  about  the  difference  between 
feminine  and  masculine  ideals;  and  here  instruc- 
tion can  be  had  by  a  comparison  of  the  novels 
written  by  men  with  the  novels   written  by 

97 


THE  STUDY  OF   FICTION 

women.  Apparently  what  man  most  admires 
in  woman  is  charm  and  submissiveness;  and 
therefore  we  discover  that  heroines  of  men's 
novels  are  likely  to  be  both  lovely  and  insipid, 
and  that  they  are  really  clever  only  when  they 
incline  toward  wickedness— Amelia  on  the  one 
hand  and  on  the  other  Becky  Sharp.  And  seem- 
ingly what  woman  most  admires  in  man  is 
strength  and  goodness;  and  therefore  we  find 
that  the  heroes  of  women's  novels  tend  to  be 
brutes,  like  Rochester  in  'Jane  Eyre,'  or  to  be 
prigs,  like  Daniel  Deronda.  Wholly  without  in- 
tention, the  writers,  men  and  women  both,  have 
disclosed  the  unformulated  and  fundamental  be- 
liefs of  each  sex  about  the  other;  and  the  testi- 
mony 'is  the  stronger  from  the  fact  that  the 
witnesses  were  not  aware  they  were  on  the 
stand. 

Almost  as  brisk  as  this  eternal  debate  between 
the  sexes  is  the  present  discussion  in  regard  to 
race-characteristics,  and  whether  or  not,  for  in- 
stance, the  civilization  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  is 
really  superior  to  that  of  the  Latin  and  that  of  the 
Slav.  Here  again  fiction  may  be  of  invaluable 
assistance  in  coming  to  a  wise  conclusion.  Con- 
sider, for  example,  how  the  chief  qualities  of  a 
people  are  unconsciously  disclosed  in  its  nov- 
els. Robinson  Crusoe  is  as  typically  English  in 
his  sturdiness  and  in  his  religious  feeling  as  the 

98 


THE  STUDY   OF  FICTION 

sorrowful  Werther  is  typically  German  or  the 
light-hearted  Manon  Lescaut  is  typically  French. 
Any  one  who  chanced  to  be  familiar  with  the 
serious  fiction  of  Spain  and  America  might  have 
forecast  the  conduct  of  the  recent  war  between 
the  two  countries  and  foretold  the  result.  Per- 
haps the  salient  inconsistency  of  the  Spanish 
character,  the  immense  chasm  between  its  poetic 
side  and  its  prosaic,  could  be  seized  by  the  mas- 
tery of  a  single  volume,  one  of  the  world's  great- 
est books,  'Don  Quixote.'  But  a  casual  perusal 
of  two  earlier  stories,  '  Lazarillo  de  Tonnes  '  and 
'Guzman  de  Alfarache,'  now  nearly  three  cen- 
turies old,  would  remind  us  how  deeply  rooted 
are  certain  of  the  characteristics  of  the  Spanish 
race— on  the  one  hand  empty  honor,  careless 
cruelty,  besotted  superstition,  administrative  cor- 
ruption, and  on  the  other  sobriety,  uncomplain- 
ing industry,  and  cheerful  courage.  These  same 
characteristics  are  discoverable  also  in  the  later 
novels  of  Valdes  and  Perez  Galdos,  although  not 
quite  so  brutally  displayed.  And  as  to  America, 
whoever  had  read  and  understood  the  recent  seri- 
ous fiction  of  the  United  States,  the  '  Rise  of  Silas 
Lapham  '  and  the  '  Hazard  of  New  Fortunes,'  the 
stories  of  Mr.  Hamlin  Garland  and  Mr.  Owen 
Wister,  the  tales  of  Miss  Wilkins  and  of  "  Octave 
Thanet,"  might  have  sized  up  us  Americans,  and 
might  have  made  a  pretty  good  guess  at  the  way 

99 


THE  STUDY   OF   FICTION 

a  war,  once  entered  upon,  would  bring  out  the  en- 
ergy of  the  race,  the  tenacity,  the  resolution,  the 
ingenuity— and  even  the  good-humored  and  easy- 
going toleration  which  is  perhaps  our  chief  de- 
fect as  a  people,  and  which  is  responsible  in  some 
measure  for  the  preventable  sufferings  of  our  sick 
soldiers. 


I  said  that  a  reader  of  the  serious  fiction  of  the 
two  countries  might  have  forecast  the  result  of 
the  war;  and  by  serious  fiction  I  meant  what  is 
often  called  Realistic  fiction,  the  fiction  in  which 
the  author  has  tried  to  tell  the  truth  about  life  as 
he  sees  it.  I  doubt  whether  any  valid  deduction 
whatever  could  have  been  made  by  a  reader  of 
Romanticist  fiction,  the  fiction  in  which  the  au- 
thor feels  himself  at  liberty  to  dress  up  the  facts 
of  life  to  suit  his  market  or  to  delight  his  caprice. 
The  Romanticist  fictions  are  more  exciting  than 
the  veritistic ;  surprise  follows  surprise,  and  so- 
called  effects  are  heaped  one  on  the  other.  Life 
as  we  all  know  it,  with  its  commonplace  duties, 
seems  drear  and  gray  after  these  excursions  into 
fairy-land  with  impossible  heroes  who  face  impos- 
sible perils  with  impossible  fortitude.  But  story- 
telling of  this  sort  is  as  dangerous  as  any  other 
departure  from  the  truth ;  and  if  it  "  takes  us  out 

100 


THE  STUDY  OF  FICTION 

of  ourselves,"  as  the  phrase  is,  if  it  supplies  the 
"anodyne  of  dreams,"  as  a  British  critic  calls  it, 
we  had  best  remember  that  the  morphine  habit, 
once  acquired,  is  not  readily  relinquished. 

The  purpose  of  the  novel,  as  of  all  literature 
indeed,  is  partly  to  amuse,  to  delight,  to  relieve. 
At  a  certain  stage  of  mental  development  we  are 
most  amused  by  the  unnatural  and  by  the  super- 
natural. As  we  grow  to  man's  estate  we  are 
likely  to  discover  that  life  itself  offers  the  most 
interesting  outlook  to  us,  and  that  the  fiction 
which  most  refreshes  us  is  that  which  best  inter- 
prets for  us  life  as  we  know  it.  The  boy  in  us, 
it  may  be,— the  boy  that  survives  more  or  less  in 
every  man  who  ever  had  a  boyhood  of  his  own, 
—the  boy  in  us  has  a  boyish  liking  still  for  deeds 
of  daring  and  for  swift  sequences  of  hairbreadth 
escapes;  but  such  puerilities  pall  sooner  or  later 
after  a  man  has  once  plumbed  the  depths  of  life 
and  seen  for  himself  its  seriousness.  "  When  I 
was  a  child,  I  spake  as  a  child,"  said  the  apostle, 
"I  understood  as  a  child,  I  thought  as  a  child: 
but  when  I  became  a  man,  I  put  away  childish 
things."  And  the  skeptic  Montaigne  tells  us  in 
his  essay  on  books  how  he  outgrew  his  youthful 
fondness  for  the  marvelous.  "  As  to  the  Ama- 
dises,  and  such  kind  of  stuff,  they  had  not  the 
credit  to  take  me  so  much  as  in  my  childhood. 
And  I  will  moreover  say  (whether  boldly  or  rashly) 

lOI 


THE  STUDY  OF  FICTION 

that  this  old  heavy  soul  of  mine  is  now  no  longer 
delighted  with  Ariosto,  no,  nor  with  the  good  fel- 
low Ovid;  his  facility  and  invention,  with  which 
I  was  formerly  so  ravished,  are  now  of  no  rel- 
ish, and  I  can  hardly  have  the  patience  to  read 
him. "  If  Montaigne  felt  thus  three  hundred  years 
ago,  before  the  birth  of  the  modern  novel,  we 
may  perhaps  maintain  now  that  a  continued  pref- 
erence for  narratives  of  physical  excitement  is  a 
sign  of  mental  immaturity. 

Montaigne  could  see  only  the  first  of  the  four 
stages  through  which  fiction  has  been  developed, 
and  the  fourth  of  them  has  been  evolved  only  in 
our  own  time.  Fiction  dealt  first  with  the  Im- 
possible, then  with  the  Improbable,  next  with 
the  Probable,  and  now  at  last  with  the  Inevitable. 
The  romances  of  chivalry,  the  '  Amadis  of  Gaul,' 
and  its  sequels,  of  which  Montaigne  wearied,  may 
serve  as  a  type  of  the  first  stage,  abounding  as 
they  do  in  deeds  frankly  impossible;  and  it  is 
not  unfair  to  find  specimens  of  the  second  class 
in  the  Waverley  Novels,  in  the  Leatherstocking 
Tales,  and  in  the  cycle  of  the  Three  Musketeers, 
wherein  we  are  entranced  by  adventures,  perhaps 
always  possible  but  often  highly  improbable.  In 
the  third  group  come  the  gentle  novels  of  Jane 
Austen,  confining  themselves  wholly  to  things 
probable;  and  in  the  final  division  we  have  Tur- 
genieff,  for  example,  handling  the  common  stuff 

1 02 


THE  STUDY  OF   FICTION 

of  humanity,  the  plain  matters  of  daily  life,  so 
as  to  bring  out  the  inevitable  result  of  the  action 
and  reaction  of  circumstance  and  character. 

Sir  Walter  Scott  once  quoted  the  lumbering 
and  inadequate  definitions  by  means  of  which  Dr. 
Johnson  sought  to  differentiate  the  romance  and 
the  novel.  A  romance,  in  Dr.  Johnson's  eyes, 
was  "  a  military  fable  of  the  Middle  Ages,  a  tale 
of  wild  adventure  in  love  and  chivalry,"  while  a 
novel  was  "a  smooth  tale,  generally  of  love." 
Scott  himself  proposed  to  amend  by  defining  a 
romance  as  "  a  fictitious  narrative  in  prose  or 
verse,  the  interest  of  which  turns  upon  marvel- 
ous or  uncommon  incidents,"  and  a  novel  as  "a 
fictitious  narrative,  differing  from  the  romance 
because  the  events  are  accommodated  to  the 
ordinary  train  of  human  events  and  the  modern 
state  of  society."  With  his  usual  clear-headed 
common  sense  Scott  seized  the  true  line  of  de- 
marcation, and  his  definition  holds  to-day,  al- 
though the  novel  has  expanded  immensely  of  late 
and  has  aspects  now  that  would  greatly  have  sur- 
prised him.  The  novel  takes  for  its  own  what 
is  likely,  what  is  usual,  what  is  ordinary,  while 
the  romance  revels  in  the  unlikely,  the  unusual, 
and  the  extraordinary.  The  novel  could  not  come 
into  existence  until  after  fiction  had  progressed 
from  the  Impossible  and  the  Improbable  at  least 
to  the  Probable.     To  this  day  the  romance  seems 

103 


THE  STUDY   OF  FICTION 

to  many  a  mere  amusement,  the  sport  of  an  idle 
hour,  and  therefore  none  too  respectable;  whereas 
the  novel  is  held  to  a  higher  responsibility,  and 
since  it  aspires  to  the  dignity  of  the  drama  it  must 
be  judged  by  the  same  lofty  standards. 

Romance  is  fond  of  trying  to  improve  its  liter- 
ary standing  by  pretending  that  it  is  also  history. 
It  was  John  Richard  Green  who  once  defined  a 
novel  as  "  history  without  documents— nothing 
to  prove  it";  and  it  is  possible  that  the  historian 
of  the  English  people  meant  by  this  to  exclude 
that  bastard  hybrid  of  fact  and  fancy  which  is 
known  as  the  historical  romance.  We  recognize 
that  the  tales  of  Russian  life,  for  instance,  which 
traveling  Frenchmen  have  narrated,  cannot  be 
wholly  trustworthy,  or  at  least  we  can  guess  at 
their  inexactness  by  recalling  the  stories  of  Amer- 
ica written  by  British  authors;  and  we  cannot 
deny  that  the  author  of  a  historical  romance  is 
also  a  carpet-bagger,— not  through  space,  but 
through  time,— and  if  his  blunders  be  not  so 
obvious,  none  the  less  must  he  blunder  abun- 
dantly. As  the  best  novels  of  Russian  life  are 
those  written  by  the  Russians  themselves  and 
the  best  novels  of  American  life  are  those  written 
by  Americans,  so  the  best  novels  of  eighteenth- 
century  manners,  for  example,  are  those  written 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  and  the  most  adequate 
stories  of  the  Italian  Renascence  are  the  stories 

104 


THE  STUDY  OF  FICTION 

written  by  Italians  during  the  Renascence.  If 
'  Romola '  is  a  great  book,  it  is  great  not  because 
of  its  historical  pretensions,  but  in  spite  of  them. 
The  historical  romances  of  writers  less  well 
equipped  than  George  Eliot  need  detain  the  stu- 
dent of  fiction  but  very  brieflyo 

VI 

A  consideration  of  the  history  of  the  modern 
novel  brings  out  two  facts:  first,  that  the  tech- 
nic  has  been  steadily  improving,  that  the  story 
is  now  told  more  directly,  that  character  is  now 
portrayed  more  carefully  and  elaborately,  and 
that  the  artist  is  more  self-respecting  and  takes 
his  work  more  seriously;  and,  second,  that  the 
desire  to  reproduce  life  with  all  its  intricacies  has 
increased  with  the  ability  to  accomplish  this. 
The  best  fiction  of  the  nineteenth  century  is  far 
less  artificial  and  less  arbitrary  than  the  best  fic- 
tion of  the  eighteenth  century.  Serious  novelists 
now  seek  for  the  interest  of  their  narratives  not 
in  the  accidents  that  befall  the  hero,  nor  in  the 
external  perils  from  which  he  chances  to  escape, 
but  rather  in  the  man  himself,  in  his  character 
with  its  balance  of  good  and  evil,  in  his  struggle 
with  his  conscience,  in  his  reaction  against  his 
heredity  and  his  environment.  Know  thyself, 
said  the  Greek  philosopher,  and  the  English  poet 

105 


THE  STUDY  OF   FICTION 

told  US  that  the  proper  study  of  mankind  is  man. 
The  modern  novel,  wisely  studied,  is  an  instru- 
ment of  great  subtlety  for  the  acquiring  of  a 
knowledge  of  ourselves  and  of  our  fellow-men. 
It  broadens  our  sympathy  by  telling  us  how  the 
other  half  lives,  and  it  also  sharpens  our  insight 
into  humanity  at  large.     It  helps  us  to  take  a 
large  and  liberal  view  of  life;  it  enlightens,  it 
sustains,  and  it  cheers.     What  Mr.  John  Morley 
once  said  of  literature  as  a  whole  is  even  more 
accurate  when  applied  to  fiction  alone:  its  pur- 
pose is  "  to  bring  sunshine  into  our  hearts  and  to 
drive  moonshine  out  of  our  heads." 
(1898) 


106 


ALPHONSE  DAUDET 


[This  biographical  criticism  was  written  to  serve  as  an  Intro- 
duction to  the  translation  of  Daudet's  works  issued  by  Messrs. 
Little,  Brown  &  Co.] 


ALPHONSE  DAUDET 

ALPHONSE  DAUDET  is  one  of  the  most  richly 
i\  gifted  of  modern  French  novelists  and  one 
of  the  most  artistic;  he  is  perhaps  the  most  de- 
lightful, and  he  is  certainly  the  most  fortunate. 
In  his  own  country  earlier  than  any  of  his  con- 
temporaries he  saw  his  stories  attain  to  the  very 
wide  circulation  that  brings  both  celebrity  and 
wealth.  Beyond  the  borders  of  his  own  lan- 
guage he  swiftly  won  a  popularity  both  with  the 
broad  public  and  with  the  professed  critics  of 
literature  second  only  to  that  of  Victor  Hugo 
and  still  surpassing  that  of  Balzac,  who  is  only 
of  late  beginning  to  receive  from  us  the  attention 
he  has  so  long  deserved. 

Daudet  has  had  the  rare  luck  of  pleasing  parti- 
zans  of  almost  every  school;  the  Realists  have 
joyed  in  his  work  and  so  have  the  Romanticists; 
his  writings  have  found  favor  in  the  eyes  of  the 
frank  Impressionists  and  also  at  the  hands  of  the 
severer  custodians  of  academic  standards.  Mr, 
Henry  James  has  declared  that  Daudet  is  "at  the 

109 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

head  of  his  profession,"  and  has  called  him  "  an 
admirable  genius."  Mr.  Robert  Louis  Stevenson 
thought  Daudet  "incomparably"  the  best  of  the 
present  French  novelists,  and  asserted  that  '  Kings 
in  Exile'  comes  "very  near  to  being  a  master- 
piece." M.  Jules  Lemaitre  tells  us  that  Daudet 
"trails  all  hearts  after  him  —  because  he  has 
charm,  as  indefinable  in  a  work  of  art  as  in  a 
woman's  face."  M.  Ferdinand  Brunetiere,  who 
has  scant  relish  for  latter-day  methods  in  lit- 
erature, admits  ungrudgingly  that  "there  are 
certain  corners  of  the  great  city  and  certain  as- 
pects of  Parisian  manners,  there  are  some  physi- 
ognomies that  perhaps  no  one  has  been  able  to 
render  so  well  as  Daudet,  with  that  infinitely 
subtle  and  patient  art  which  succeeds  in  giving 
even  to  inanimate  things  the  appearance  of  life." 


The  documents  are  abundant  for  an  analysis  of 
Daudet  such  as  Sainte-Beuve  would  have  under- 
taken with  avidity;  they  are  more  abundant, 
indeed,  than  for  any  other  contemporary  French 
man  of  letters  even  in  these  days  of  unhesitating 
self-revelation ;  and  they  are  also  of  an  absolutely 
impregnable  authenticity.  M.  Ernest  Daudet  has 
written  a  whole  volume  to  tell  us  all  about  his 
brother's  boyhood  and  youth  and  early  manhood 

no 


ALPHONSE    DAUDET 

and  first  steps  in  literature.  M.  Leon  Daudet  has 
written  another  solid  tome  to  tell  us  all  about  his 
father's  literary  principles  and  family  life  and  later 
years  and  death.  Daudet  himself  put  forth  a 
pair  of  pleasant  books  of  personal  gossip  about 
himself,  narrating  his  relations  with  his  fellow- 
authors,  and  recording  the  circumstances  under 
which  he  came  to  compose  each  of  his  earlier 
stories.  Montaigne  —  whose  '  Essays  '  was  Dau- 
det's  bedside  book,  and  who  may  be  accepted 
not  unfairly  as  an  authority  upon  egotism  —  as- 
sures us  that  "there  is  no  description  so  difficult, 
nor  doubtless  of  so  great  utility,  as  that  of  one's 
self"  And  Daudet's  own  interest  in  himself  isv 
not  unlike  Montaigne's  —  it  is  open,  innocent, 
and  illuminating. 

Cuvier  may  have  been  able  to  reconstruct  an 
extinct  monster  from  the  inspection  of  a  single 
bone;  but  it  is  a  harder  task  to  revive  the  figure 
of  a  man,  even  by  the  aid  of  these  family  testi- 
monies, this  self-analysis,  the  diligence  of  count- 
less interviewers  of  all  nationalities,  and  the  in- 
discretion of  a  friend  like  Edmond  de  Goncourt 
(who  seems  to  have  acted  on  the  theory  that  it 
is  the  whole  duty  of  man  to  take  notes  of  the 
talk  of  his  fellows  for  prompt  publication).  Yet 
we  have  ample  material  to  enable  us  to  trace 
Daudet's  heredity,  and  to  estimate  the  influence 
of  his  environment  in  the  days  of  his  youth,  and' 

1 1 1 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

to  allow  for  the  effect  which  certain  of  his  own 
physical  peculiarities  must  have  had  upon  his 

yexercise  of  his  art.  His  near-sightedness,  for 
example  —  would  not  Sainte-Beuve  have  seized 
upon  this  as  significant  ?  Would  he  not  have 
seen  in  this  a  possible  source  of  Daudet's  mastery 
of  description  ?  And  the  spasms  of  pain  borne 
bravely  and  uncomplainingly,  the  long  agony  of 
his  later  years,  what  mark  has  this  left  on  his 
work,  how  far  is  it  responsible  for  a  modification 
of  his  attitude  —  for  the  change  from  the  careless 
gaiety  of  '  Tartarin  of  Tarascon '  to  the  somber 
satire  of  *  Port  Tarascon '  ?  What  caused  the 
joyous  story-teller  of  the  '  Letters  from  my 
Mill '  to  develop  into  the  bitter  iconoclast  of  the 
'  Immortal '  ? 

These  questions  are  insistent;  and  yet,  after 
all,  what  matters  the  answer  to  any  of  them  ? 
The  fact  remains  that  Daudet  had  his  share  of 

p-that  incommunicable  quality  which  we  are  agreed 
to  call  genius.  This  once  admitted,  we  may  do 
our  best  to  weigh  it  and  to  resolve  it  into  its  ele- 
ments; it  is  at  bottom  the  vital  spark  that  resists 
all  examination,  however  scientific  we  may  seek 
to  be.  We  can  test  for  this  and  for  that,  but  in 
the  final  analysis  genius  is  inexplicable.  It  is 
what  it  is  because  it  is.  It  might  have  been 
different,  no  doubt,  but  it  is  not.  It  is  its  own 
excuse  for  being;  and,  for  all  that  we  can  say  to 

112 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

the  contrary,  it  is  its  own  cause,  sufficient  unto 
itself.  Even  if  we  had  Sainte-Beuve's  scalpel, 
we  could  not  surprise  the  secret. 

Yet  an  inquiry  into  the  successive  stages  of 
Daudet's  career,  a  consideration  of  his  ancestry, 
of  his  parentage,  of  his  birth,  of  the  circumstances 
of  his  boyhood,  of  his  youthful  adventures  — 
these  things  are  interesting  in  themselves,  and 
they  are  not  without  instruction.  They  reveal 
to  us  the  reasons  for  the  transformation  that  goes 
so  far  to  explain  Daudet's  peculiar  position  —  the^ 
transformation  of  a  young  Provencal  poet  into  a 
brilliant  Parisian  veritist.  Daudet  was  a  Proven- 
cal who  became  a  Parisian;  and  in  this  trans- 
lation we  may  find  the  key  to  his  character  as  a 
writer  of  fiction. 

He  was  from  Provence  as  Maupassant  was 
from  Normandy;  and  Daudet  had  the  Southern-^ 
expansiveness  and  abundance,  just  as  Maupassant 
had  the  Northern  reserve  and  caution.  If  an 
author  is  ever  to  bring  forth  fruit  after  his  kind 
he  must  have  roots  in  the  soil  of  his  nativity. 
Daudet  was  no  orchid,  beautiful  and  scentless; 
his  writings  have  always  the  full  flavor  of  the 
Southern  soil.  He  was  able  to  set  Tartarin  be- 
fore us  so  sympathetically  and  to  make  Numa 
Roumestan  so  convincing  because  he  recognized 
in  himself  the  possibility  of  a  like  exuberance. 
He  could  never  take  the    rigorously  impassive 

>'3 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

attitude  which  Flaubert  taught  Maupassant  to 
assume.  Daudet  not  only  feels  for  his  characters, 
but  he  is  quite  willing  that  we  should  be  aware 
of  his  compassion. 

He  is  not  only  incapable  of  the  girding  enmity 
which  Taine  detected  and  detested  in  Thackeray's 
treatment  of  Becky  Sharp,  but  he  is  also  devoid 
of  the  callous  detachment  with  which  Flaubert 
dissected  Emma  Bovary  under  the  microscope. 
Daudet  is  never  flagrantly  hostile  toward  one  of 
his  creatures;  and  however  contemptible  or  des- 
picable the  characters  he  has  called  into  being, 
he  is  scrupulously  fair  to  them.  Sidonie  and  Fe- 
licia Ruys  severally  throw  themselves  away,  but 
Daudet  is  never  intolerant.  He  is  inexorable, 
but  he  is  not  insulting.  I  cannot  but  think  that 
it  is  Provence  whence  Daudet  derived  the  precious 
birthright  of  sympathy,  and  that  it  is  Provence 
again  which  bestowed  on  him  the  rarer  gift  of 
.sentiment.  It  is  by  his  possession  of  sympathy 
and  of  sentiment  that  he  has  escaped  the  arid- 
ity which  suffocates  us  in  the  works  of  so  many 
other  Parisian  novelists.  The  South  endowed 
him  with  warmth  and  heartiness  and  vivacity; 
'/  and  what  he  learned  from  Paris  was  the  power  of 
self-restraint  and  the  duty  of  finish. 

He  was  born  in  Provence  and  he  died  in  Paris; 
he  began  as  a  poet  and  he  ended  as  a  veritist; 
and  in  each  case  there  was  logical  evolution  and 

114 


V 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

not  contradiction.  Tiie  Parisian  did  not  cease  to 
be  a  Provencal ;  and  the  novelist  was  a  lyrist  still. 
Poet  though  he  was,  he  had  an  intense  liking  for 
the  actual,  the  visible,  the  tangible.  He  so  hun- 
gered after  truth  that  he  was  ready  sometimes  to 
stay  his  stomach  with  facts  in  its  stead  —  mere 
fact  being  but  the  outward  husk,  whereas  truth 
is  the  rich  kernel  concealed  within.  His  son  tells 
us  that  Daudet  might  have  taken  as  a  motto  the 
title  of  Goethe's  autobiography,  '  Dichtung  und 
Wahrheit' —  '  Poetry  and  Truth.'  And  this  it  is 
that  has  set  Daudet  apart  and  that  has  caused  his 
vogue  with  readers  of  all  sorts  and  conditions 
—  this  unique  combination  of  imagination  and 
verity.  "  His  originality,"  M.  Jules  Lemaitre  has 
acutely  remarked,  "is  closely  to  unite  observa- 
tion and  fantasy,  to  extract  from  the  truth  all 
that  it  contains  of  the  improbable  and  the  sur- 
prising, to  satisfy  at  the  same  time  the  readers 
of  M.  Cherbuliez  and  the  readers  of  M.  Zola,  to 
write  novels  which  are  at  the  same  time  Realistic 
and  Romantic,  and  which  seem  Romantic  only 
because  they  are  very  sincerely  and  very  pro- 
foundly Realistic." 


Alphonse  Daudet  was  born  m  1840,  and  it  was 
at  Nimes  that  he  first  began  to  observe  mankind; 
and  he  has  described  his  birthplace  and  his  boyhood 

i'5 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

in  '  Little  What's-his-name,' a  novel  even  richer 
in  autobiographical  revelation  than  is  *  David 
Copperfield.'  His  father  was  a  manufacturer 
whose  business  was  not  prosperous  and  who  was 
forced  at  last  to  remove  with  the  whole  fam- 
ily to  Lyons  in  the  vain  hope  of  doing  better  in 
the  larger  town.  After  reading  the  account  of 
this  parent's  peculiarities  in  M,  Ernest  Daudet's 
book,  we  are  not  surprised  that  the  affairs  of  the 
family  did  not  improve,  but  went  from  bad  to 
worse.  Alphonse  Daudet  suffered  bitterly  in 
these  years  of  desperate  struggle,  but  he  gained 
an  understanding  of  the  conditions  of  mercantile 
life  to  be  serviceable  later  in  the  composition  of 
'Fromont  and  Risler.' 

When  he  was  sixteen  he  secured  a  place  as 
pion  in  a  boarding-school  in  the  Cevennes.  A 
pion  is  a  poor  devil  of  a  youth  hired  to  keep 
watch  on  the  boys.  How  painful  this  position 
was  to  the  young  poet  can  be  read  indirectly  in 
'Little  What's-his-name,'  but  more  explicitly  in 
the  history  of  that  story,  printed  now  in  '  Thirty 
Years  of  Paris.'  From  this  remote  prison  he  was 
rescued  by  his  elder  brother,  Ernest,  who  was 
trying  to  make  his  way  in  Paris,  and  who  sent 
for  Alphonse  as  soon  as  he  had  been  engaged  to 
help  an  old  gentleman  in  writing  his  memoirs. 
The  younger  brother  has  described  his  arrival  in 
Paris,  and  his  first  dress-coat,  and  his  earliest 

ii6 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

literary  acquaintances.  Ernest's  salary  was  sev- 
enty-five francs  a  month,  and  on  this  the  two 
brothers  managed  to  live;  no  doubt  fifteen  dol- 
lars went  further  in  Paris  in  1857  than  they  did 
forty  years  later. 

In  those  days  of  privation  and  ambition  Dau- 
det's  longing  was  to  make  himself  famous  as  a 
poet;  and  when  at  last,  not  yet  twenty  years 
old,  he  began  his  career  as  a  man  of  letters,  it 
was  by  the  publication  of  a  volume  of  verse,  just 
as  his  fellow-novelists,  M.  Paul  Bourget  and 
Signor  Gabriele  d'Annunzio  have  severally  done. 
Immature  as  juvenile  lyrics  are  likely  to  be,  these 
early  rimes  of  Daudet's  have  a  flavor  of  their 
own,  a  faintly  recognizable  note  of  individuality. 
He  is  more  naturally  a  poet  than  most  modern 
literators  who  possess  the  accomplishment  of 
verse  as  part  of  their  equipment  for  the  literary 
life,  but  who  lack  a  spontaneous  impulse  toward 
rhythm.  It  may  even  be  suggested  that  his  little 
poems  are  less  artificial  than  most  French  verse; 
they  are  the  result  of  a  less  obvious  effort.  He 
lisped  in  numbers;  and  with  him  it  was  rather 
prose  that  had  to  be  consciously  acquired.  His 
lyric  note,  although  not  keen  and  not  deep,  is 
heard  again  and  again  in  his  novels,  and  it  sus- 
tains some  of  the  most  graceful  and  tender  of  his 
short-stories  —  the  'Death  of  the  Dauphin,'  for 
instance,  and  the  '  Sous-prefet  in  the  Fields.' 

"7 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

Daudet  extended  poetry  to  include  play  making ; 
and  alone  or  with  a  friend  he  attempted  more 
than  one  little  piece  in  rime  —  tiny  plays  of  a 
type  familiar  enough  at  the  Odeon.  He  has  told 
us  how  the  news  of  the  production  of  one  of 
these  poetic  dramas  came  to  him  afar  in  Algiers, 
whither  he  had  been  sent  because  of  a  weakness 
of  the  lungs,  threatening  to  become  worse  in  the 
gray  Parisian  winter.  Other  plays  of  his,  some 
of  them  far  more  important  than  this  early  effort, 
were  produced  in  the  next  few  years.  The  most 
ambitious  of  these  was  the  'Woman  of  Aries,' 
which  he  had  elaborated  from  a  touching  short- 
story,  and  for  which  Bizet  composed  incidental 
music  as  beautiful  and  as  overwhelming  as  that 
prepared  by  Mendelssohn  for  the  '  Midsummer 
Night's  Dream.' 

No  one  of  Daudet's  dramatic  attempts  was 
really  successful — not  the  'Woman  of  Aries,' 
which  is  less  moving  in  the  theater  than  in  its 
briefer  narrative  form,  not  even  the  latest  of  them 
all,  the  freshest  and  the  most  vigorous,  the 
'  Struggle  for  Life,'  with  its  sinister  figure  of  Paul 
Astier  taken  over  from  the  '  Immortal.'  Appar- 
ently, with  all  his  desire  to  write  for  the  stage, 
Daudet  must  have  been  inadequately  endowed 
with  the  dramaturgic  faculty,  that  special  gift  of 
playmaking  which  many  a  poet  lacks  and  many 
a  novelist,  but  which  the  humblest  playwright 

ii8 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

must  needs  have  and  which  all  the  great  drama- 
tists have  possessed  abundantly  in  addition  to 
their  poetic  power. 

Perhaps  it  was  the  unfavorable  reception  of  his 
successive  dramas  which  is  responsible  for  the 
chief  of  Daudet's  lapses  from  the  kindliness  with 
which  he  treats  the  characters  that  people  his 
stories.  He  seems  to  have  kept  hot  a  grudge 
against  the  theater,  and  he  relieves  his  feelings  v^ 
by  taking  it  out  of  the  stage-folk  he  introduces 
into  his  novels.  To  actors  and  actresses  he  is 
intolerant  and  harsh.  What  is  factitious  and 
self-overvaluing  in  the  Proven(;al  type,  he  un- 
derstood and  he  found  it  easy  to  pardon;  but 
what  was  factitious  and  self-overvaluing  in  the 
player  type,  he  would  not  understand  and  he 
refused  to  pardon.  And  here  he  shows  in  strong 
contrast  with  a  successful  dramatist,  M.  Ludovic 
Halevy,  whose  knowledge  of  the  histrionic  tem- 
perament is  at  least  as  wide  as  Daudet's  and 
whose  humor  is  as  keen,  but  whose  judgment 
is  softened  by  the  grateful  memory  of  many  vic- 
tories won  by  the  united  eflfort  of  the  author  and 
the  actor. 

Through  his  brother's  influence,  Alphonse 
Daudet  was  appointed  by  the  Duke  of  Morny  to 
a  semi-sinecure;  and  he  has  recorded  how  he 
told  his  benefactor  before  accepting  the  place  that 
he  was  a  Legitimist,  and  how  the  Duke  smilingly 

119 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

retorted  that  the  Empress  was  also.  Although 
it  was  as  a  poet  that  Daudet  made  his  bow  in 
the  world  of  letters,  his  first  appearance  as  a 
dramatist  was  not  long  delayed  thereafter;  and 
he  soon  came  forward  also  as  a  journalist  —  or 
rather  as  a  contributor  to  the  papers.  While 
many  of  the  articles  he  prepared  for  the  daily  and 
weekly  press  were  of  ephemeral  interest  only,  as 
the  necessity  of  journalism  demands,  to  be  for- 
gotten forty-eight  hours  after  they  were  printed, 
not  a  few  of  them  were  sketches  having  more 
than  a  temporary  value.  Parisian  newspapers 
are  more  hospitable  to  literature  than  are  the 
newspapers  of  New  York  or  of  London,  and  a 
goodly  proportion  of  the  young  Southerner's 
journalistic  writing  proved  worthy  of  preserva- 
tion. 

It  has  been  preserved  for  us  in  three  volumes 
of  short-stories  and  sketches,  of  fantasies  and 
impressions.  Not  all  the  contents  of  the  '  Let- 
ters from  my  Mill,'  of  the  'Monday  Tales,'  and 
of  'Artists'  Wives,'  as  we  have  these  collections 
now,  were  written  in  these  early  years  of  Dau- 
det's  Parisian  career,  but  many  of  them  saw  the 
light  before  1870,  and  what  has  been  added  since 
conforms  in  method  to  the  work  of  his  prentice 
days.  No  doubt  the  war  with  Prussia  enlarged 
his  outlook  on  life;  and  there  is  more  depth  in 
the  satires  this  conflict  suggested  and  more  pa- 

120 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

thos  in  the  pictures  it  evoked.  The  'Last  Les- 
son,' for  example,  that  simple  vision  of  the  old 
French  schoolmaster  taking  leave  of  his  Alsatian 
pupils,  has  a  symbolic  breath  not  easy  to  match 
in  the  livelier  tales  written  before  the  surrender  at 
Sedan;  and  in  the  'Siege  of  Berlin'  there  is  a 
vibrant  patriotism  far  more  poignant  than  we  can 
discover  in  any  of  the  playful  apologues  published 
before  the  war.  He  had  had  an  inside  view  of 
the  Second  Empire;  he  could  not  help  seeing  its 
hollowness,  and  he  revolted  against  the  selfish- 
ness of  its  servants;  no  single  chapter  of  M. 
Zola's  splendid  and  terrible  '  Downfall '  contains 
a  more  damning  indictment  of  the  leaders  of 
the  imperial  army  than  is  to  be  read  in  Daudet's 
'  Game  of  Billiards.' 

The  short-story,  whether  in  prose  or  in  verse, 
is  a  literary  form  in  which  the  French  have  ever 
displayed  an  easy  mastery;  and  from  Daudet's 
three  volumes  it  would  not  be  difficult  to  select 
half  a  dozen  little  masterpieces.  The  Provencal 
tales  lack  only  rimes  to  stand  confessed  as 
poesy;  and  many  a  reader  may  prefer  these  first 
flights,  before  Daudet  set  his  Pegasus  to  toil  in 
the  mill  of  realism.  The  'Pope's  Mule,'  for  in- 
stance, is  not  this  a  marvel  of  blended  humor  and 
fantasy?  And  the  '  Elixir  of  Father  Gaucher,' 
what  could  be  more  naively  ironic  ?  Like  a  true 
Southerner,  Daudet   delights  in  girding  at   the 

121 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

church;  and  these  tales  bristle  with  gibes  at 
ecclesiastical  dignitaries;  but  his  stroke  is  never 
malignant,  and  there  is  no  barb  to  his  shaft  nor 
poison  on  the  tip. 

Scarcely  inferior  to  the  war  stories  or  to  the 
Provencal  sketches  are  certain  vignettes  of  the 
capital,  swift  silhouettes  of  Paris,  glimpsed  by  an 
unforgetting  eye  — the  'Last  Book,'  for  one,  in 
which  an  unlovely  character  is  treated  with 
kindly  contempt;  and  for  another,  the  '  Book- 
keeper,' the  most  Dickens-like  of  Daudet's  shorter 
pieces,  yet  having  a  literary  modesty  Dickens 
never  attained.  The  alleged  imitation  of  the 
British  novelist  by  the  French  may  be  left  for 
later  consideration;  but  it  is  possible  now  to  note 
that  in  the  earlier  descriptive  chapters  of  the 
'  Letters  from  my  Mill '  one  may  detect  a  certain 
similarity  of  treatment  and  attitude,  not  to  Dick- 
ens but  to  two  of  the  masters  on  whom  Dickens 
modeled  himself— Goldsmith  and  Irving.  The 
scene  in  the  diligence,  when  the  baker  gently 
pokes  fun  at  the  poor  fellow  whose  wife  is  inter- 
mittent in  her  fidelity,  is  quite  in  the  manner  of 
the  'Sketch-Book.' 

There  is  the  same  freshness  and  fertility  in  the 
collection  called  '  Artists'  Wives '  as  in  the  '  Let- 
ters from  my  Mill'  and  the  'Monday  Tales,'  but 
not  the  same  playfulness  and  fun.  They  are 
severe  studies,  all  of  them ;  and  they  all  illustrate 

122 


ALPHONSE    DAUDET 

the  truth  of  Bagehot's  saying  that  a  man's  mother 
might  be  his  misfortune,  but  his  wife  was  his  fault. 
It  is  a  rosary  of  marital  infelicities  that  Daudet 
has  strung  for  us  in  this  volume,  and  in  every 
one  of  them  the  husband  is  expiating  his  blunder. 
With  ingenious  variety  the  author  rings  the 
changes  on  one  theme,  on  the  sufferings  of  the 
ill-mated  poet  or  painter  or  sculptor,  despoiled 
of  the  sympathy  he  craves,  and  shackled  even  in 
the  exercise  of  his  art.  And  the  picture  is  not 
out  of  drawing,  for  Daudet  can  see  the  wife's 
side  of  the  case  also;  he  can  appreciate  her  be- 
wilderment at  the  ugly  duckling  whom  it  is  so 
difficult  for  her  to  keep  in  the  nest.  The  women 
have  made  shipwreck  of  their  lives  too,  and  they 
are  companions  in  misery,  if  not  helpmeets  in 
understanding.  This  is  perhaps  the  saddest  of 
all  Daudet's  books,  the  least  relieved  by  humor, 
the  most  devoid  of  the  gaiety  which  illumines 
the  '  Letters  from  my  Mill '  and  the  first  and 
second  Tartarin  voiumeso  But  it  is  also  one 
of  the  most  veracious;  it  is  life  itself  firmly 
grasped  and  honestly  presented. 

It  is  not  matrimonial  incongruity  at  large  in  all 
its  shifting  aspects  that  Daudet  here  considers; 
it  is  only  the  married  unhappiness  of  the  artist, 
whatever  his  mode  of  expression  and  which- 
ever of  the  muses  he  has  chosen  to  serve;  it  is 
only  the  wedded  life  of  the  man  incessantly  in 

123 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

search  of  the  ideal,  and  never  relaxing  in  the 
strain  of  his  struggle  with  the  inflexible  material 
from  which  he  must  shape  his  vision  of  existence. 
Not  only  in  this  book  but  in  many  another  has 
Daudet  shown  that  he  perceives  the  needs  of  the 
artistic  temperament,  its  demands,  its  limitations, 
and  its  characteristics.  There  is  a  playwright  in 
'Rose  and  Ninette';  there  is  a  painter  in  the 
'Immortal';  there  is  an  actor  in  "Fromont  and 
Risler';  there  are  a  sculptor,  a  poet,  and  a  novelist 
on  the  roll  of  the  heroine's  lovers  in  'Sapho.' 
Daudet  handles  them  gently  always,  unless  they 
happen  to  belong  to  the  theater.  Toward  the 
stage-folk  he  is  pitiless;  for  all  other  artists  he 
has  abundant  appreciation;  he  is  not  blind  to 
their  little  weaknesses,  but  these  he  can  forgive 
even  though  he  refuses  to  forget;  he  is  at  home 
with  them.  He  is  never  patronizing,  as  Thack- 
eray is,  who  also  knows  them  and  loves  them. 
Thackeray's  attitude  is  that  of  a  gentleman  born 
to  good  society,  but  glad  to  visit  Bohemia,  be- 
cause he  can  speak  the  language;  Daudet's  is 
that  of  a  man  of  letters  who  thinks  that  his 
fellow-artists  are  really  the  best  society. 

Ill 

Not  with  pictures  of  artists  at  home  did  Dau- 
det conquer  his  commanding  position  in  litera- 

124 


ALPHONSE  DAUDET 

ture,  not  with  short-stories,  not  with  plays,  not 
with  verses.  These  had  served  to  make  him 
known  to  the  inner  circle  of  lovers  of  literature 
who  are  quick  to  appreciate  whatever  is  at  once 
new  and  true ;  but  they  did  not  help  him  to  break 
through  the  crust  and  to  reach  the  hearts  of  the 
broad  body  of  readers  who  care  little  for  the 
delicacies  of  the  season,  but  must  ever  be  fed  on 
strong  meat.  When  the  latest  of  the  three  vol- 
umes of  short-stories  was  published,  and  when 
the  *  Woman  of  Aries '  was  produced,  the  trans- 
formation was  complete :  the  poet  had  developed 
into  a  veritist  without  ceasing  to  be  a  poet,  and 
the  Provencal  had  become  a  Parisian.  His  wan- 
der-years were  at  an  end,  and  he  had  made  a 
happy  marriage.  Lucky  in  the  risky  adventure 
of  matrimony,  as  in  so  many  others,  he  chanced 
upon  a  woman  who  was  congenial,  intelligent, 
and  devoted,  and  who  became  almost  a  collabo- 
rator in  all  his  subsequent  works. 

His  art  was  ready  for  a  larger  effort;  it  was 
ripe  for  a  richer  fruitage.  Already  had  he  made 
more  than  one  attempt  at  a  long  story,  but  this 
was  before  his  powers  had  matured  and  before  he 
had  come  to  a  full  knowledge  of  himself.  '  Little 
What's-his-name,'  as  he  himself  has  confessed, 
lacks  perspective;  it  was  composed  too  soon  )( 
after  the  personal  experiences  out  of  which  it  was 
made  —  before  time  had  put  the  scenes  in  proper 

125 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

proportion  and  before  his  hand  was  firm  in  its 
stroke.  'Robert  Helmont'  is  the  journal  of  an 
observer  who  happens  also  to  be  a  poet  and  a 
patriot;  but  it  has  scarcely  substance  enough  to 
warrant  calling  it  a  story.  Much  of  the  material 
used  in  the  making  of  these  books  was  very  good 
indeed;  but  the  handling  was  a  little  uncertain, 
and  the  result  is  not  quite  satisfoctory,  charming 
as  both  of  them  are,  with  the  seductive  grace 
which  is  Daudet's  birthright  and  his  trade-mark. 
In  his  brief  tales  he  had  shown  that  he  had  the 
story-telling  faculty,  the  ability  to  project  charac- 
ter, the  gift  of  arousing  interest;  but  it  remained 
for  him  to  prove  that  he  possessed  also  the  main 
strength  requisite  to  carry  him  through  the  long 
labor  of  a  full-grown  novel.  It  is  not  by  gen- 
tle stories  like  '  Robert  Helmont '  and  '  Little 
What's-his-name '  that  a  novelist  is  promoted 
to  the  front  rank;  and  after  he  had  written  these 
two  books  he  remained  where  he  was  before,  in 
the  position  of  a  promising  young  author. 

The  promise  was  fulfilled  by  the  publication 
of  'Fromont  and  Risler' — not  the  best  of  his 
novels,  but  the  earliest  in  which  his  full  force 
was  displayed.  Daudet  has  told  us  how  this 
was  planned  originally  as  a  play,  how  the  failure 
of  the  '  Woman  of  Aries '  led  him  to  relinquish 
the  dramatic  form,  and  how  the  supposed  neces- 
sities of  the   stage  warped  the  logical  structure 

126 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

of  the  Story,  wrenching  to  the  intrigues  of  the 
young  wife  the  interest  which  should  have  been 
concentrated  upon  the  partnership,  the  business 
rivalry,  the  mercantile  integrity,  whence  the 
novel  derived  its  novelty.  Daudet  yielded  only 
this  once  to  the  falsifying  habit  of  thrusting 
marital  infidelity  into  the  foreground  of  fiction 
when  the  theme  itself  seems  almost  to  exclude 
any  dwelling  on  amorous  misadventure;  and  this 
is  one  reason  why  a  truer  view  of  Parisian  life 
can  be  found  in  his  pages  than  in  those  of  any 
of  his  competitors,  and  why  his  works  are  far 
less  monotonous  than  theirs. 

He  is  not  squeamish,  as  every  reader  of 
'  Sapho '  can  bear  witness ;  but  he  does  not  wan- 
tonly choose  a  vulgar  adultery  as  the  staple  of 
his  stories.  French  fiction,  ever  since  the  tale  of 
'  Tristan  and  Yseult '  was  first  told,  has  tended 
to  be  a  poem  of  love  triumphant  over  every  ob- 
stacle, even  over  honor;  and  Daudet  is  a  French- 
man, with  French  ideas  about  woman  and  love 
and  marriage.  He  is  not  without  his  share  of 
Gallic  salt;  but  he  is  too  keen  an  observer  not  to 
see  that  there  are  other  things  in  life  than  illicit 
wooings — business,  for  example,  and  politics, 
and  religion — important  factors  all  of  them  in 
our  complicated  modern  existence.  At  the  root 
of  him  Daudet  had  a  steadfast  desire  to  see  life  as 
a  whole  and  to  tell  the  truth  about  it  unhesitat- 

127 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

ingly;  and  this  is  a  characteristic  he  shares  only 
with  the  great  masters  of  fiction  —  essentially  ve- 
racious, every  one  of  them. 

Probably  Dickens,  frequently  as  he  contorted 
the  facts  of  life  into  conformity  with  his  rather 
primitive  artistic  code,  believed  that  he  also  was 
telling  the  truth.  It  is  in  Daudet's  paper  explain- 
ing how  he  came  to  write  '  Fromont  and  Risler ' 
that  he  discusses  the  accusation  that  he  was  an 
imitator  of  Dickens  —  an  accusation  which  seems 
absurd  enough  now  that  the  careers  of  both 
writers  are  closed,  and  that  we  can  compare 
their  complete  works.  Daudet  records  that  the 
charge  was  brought  against  him  very  early,  long 
before  he  had  read  Dickens,  and  he  explains  that 
any  likeness  that  may  exist  is  due  not  to  copy- 
ing but  to  kinship  of  spirit.  "I  have  deep  in 
my  heart,"  he  says,  "the  same  love  Dickens  has 
for  the  maimed  and  the  poor,  for  the  children 
brought  up  in  all  the  deprivation  of  great  cities." 
This  pity  for  the  disinherited,  for  those  that  have 
had  no  chance  in  life,  is  not  the  only  similarity 
between  the  British  novelist  and  the  French; 
there  is  also  the  peculiar  combination  of  senti- 
ment and  humor.  Daudet  is  not  so  overmaster- 
ing as  Dickens;  but  he  is  far  more  discreet,  far 
truer  to  nature,  far  finer  in  his  art;  he  does  not 
let  his  humor  carry  him  into  caricature,  nor  his 
sentiment  weaken  into  sentimentality. 

128 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

Even  the  minor  French  novelists  strive  for 
beauty  of  form,  and  would  be  ashamed  of  the 
fortuitous  scaffolding  that  satisfies  the  British 
story-tellers.  A  eulogist  of  Dickens,  Mr.  George 
Gissing,  has  recently  remarked  acutely  that 
"Daudet  has  a  great  advantage  in  his  mastery 
of  construction.  Where,  as  in  '  Fromont  and 
Risler,'  he  constructs  too  well,  that  is  to  say,  on 
the  stage  model,  we  see  what  a  gain  it  was  to 
him  to  have  before  his  eyes  the  Paris  stage  of  the 
Second  Empire,  instead  of  that  of  London  in  the 
earlier  Victorian  time."  Where  Dickens  emu- 
lated the  farces  and  the  melodramas  of  forgotten 
British  playwrights,  Daudet  was  influenced 
rather  by  the  virile  dramas  of  Dumas  fils  and 
Augier.  But  in  'Fromont  and  Risler,'  not  only 
is  the  plot  a  trifle  stagy,  but  the  heroine  herself 
seems  almost  a  refugee  from  the  footlights.  Ex- 
quisitely presented  as  Sidonie  is,  she  fails  quite 
to  captivate  or  convince,  perhaps  because  her 
sisters  have  been  seen  so  often  before  in  this  play 
and  in  that.  And  now  and  again  even  in  his 
later  novels  we  discover  that  Daudet  has  need- 
lessly achieved  the  adroit  arrangement  of  events 
so  useful  in  the  theater  and  not  requisite  in  the 
library.  In  the  'Nabob,'  for  example,  it  is 
the  "long  arm  of  coincidence  "  that  brings  Paul 
de  Gery  to  the  inn  on  the  Riviera,  and  to  the 
very  next  room   therein  at  the  exact  moment 

129 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

when    Jenkins    catches    up    with    the    fleeing 
Felicia. 

Yet  these  lapses  into  the  arbitrary  are  infre- 
quent after  all;  and  as  'Fromont  and  Risler'  was 
followed  first  by  one  and  then  by  another  novel, 
the  evil  influence  of  theatrical  conventionalism 
disappears.  Daudet  occasionally  permits  him- 
self an  underplot;  but  he  acted  always  on  the 
principle  he  once  formulated  to  his  son:  "Every 
book  is  an  organism ;  if  it  has  not  its  organs  in 
place,  it  dies,  and  its  corpse  is  a  scandal."  Some- 
times, as  in  'Fromont  and  Risler,'  he  starts  at 
the  moment  when  the  plot  thickens,  returning 
soon  to  make  clear  the  antecedents  of  the  char- 
acters first  shown  in  action;  and  sometimes,  as 
in  'Sapho,'  he  begins  right  at  the  beginning  and 
goes  straight  through  to  the  end.  But,  whatever 
his  method,  there  is  never  any  doubt  as  to  the 
theme ;  and  the  essential  unity  is  always  apparent 
This  severity  of  design  in  no  way  limits  the  va- 
riety of  the  successive  acts  of  his  drama. 

While  a  novel  of  Balzac's  is  often  no  more  than 
an  analysis  of  character,  and  while  a  novel  of 
Zola's  is  a  massive  epic  of  human  endeavor,  a 
novel  of  Daudet's  is  a  gallery  of  pictures,  brushed 
in  with  the  sweep  and  certainty  of  a  master 
hand  —  portraits,  landscapes  with  figures,  ma- 
rines, battle-pieces,  bits  of  genre,  viev/s  of  Paris. 
And  the  views  of  Paris  outnumber  the  others, 

130 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

and  almost  outvalue  them  also.  Mr,  Henry 
James  has  noted  that  the  'Nabob'  is  "full  of 
episodes  which  are  above  all  pages  of  execution, 
triumphs  of  translation.  The  author  has  drawn 
up  a  list  of  the  Parisian  solemnities,  and  painted 
the  portrait  or  given  a  summary  of  each  of  them. 
The  opening  day  at  the  Salon,  a  funeral  at  Pere 
la  Chaise,  a  debate  in  the  Chamber  of  Deputies, 
the  premiere  of  a  new  play  at  a  favorite  theater, 
furnish  him  with  so  many  opportunities  for  his 
gymnastics  of  observation."  And  the  'Nabob' 
is  only  a  little  more  richly  decorated  than  the 
'  Immortal,'  and  '  Numa  Roumestan,'  and  '  Kings 
in  Exile.' 

These  pictures,  these  carefully  wrought  mas- 
terpieces of  rendering,  are  not  lugged  in,  each  for 
its  own  sake;  they  are  not  outside  of  the  narra- 
tive; they  are  actually  part  of  the  substance  of 
the  story.  Daudet  excels  in  describing,  and 
every  artist  is  prone  to  abound  in  the  sense  of 
his  superiority.  As  the  French  saying  puts  it,  a 
man  has  always  the  defects  of  his  qualities.  Yet 
Daudet  rarely  obtrudes  his  descriptions,  and  he 
generally  uses  them  to  explain  character  and  to 
set  off  or  bring  out  the  moods  of  his  personages. 
They  are  so  swift  that  I  am  tempted  to  call  them 
flash-lights;  but  photographic  is  just  what  they 
are  not,  for  they  are  artistic  in  their  vigorous  sup- 
pression of  unessentials;  they  are  never  gray  or 


ALPHONSE    DAUDET 

cold  or  hard;  they  vibrate  with  color  and  tingle 
with  emotion. 

And  just  as  a  painter  keeps  filling  his  sketch- 
books with  graphic  hints  for  elaboration  later,  so 
Daudet  was  indefatigable  in  note-taking.  He 
explains  his  method  in  his  paper  of  '  Fromont 
and  Risler':  how  he  had  for  a  score  of  years 
made  a  practice  of  jotting  down  in  little  note- 
books not  only  his  remarks  and  his  thoughts, 
but  also  a  rapid  record  of  what  he  had  heard 
with  his  ears  ever  on  the  alert,  and  what  he  had 
seen  with  those  tireless  eyes  of  his.  Yet  he  never 
let  the  dust  of  these  note-books  choke  the  life 
out  of  him.  Every  one  of  his  novels  was  founded 
on  fact  —  plot,  incidents,  characters,  and  scenery. 

He  used  his  imagination  to  help  him  to  see; 
he  used  it  also  to  peer  into  and  behind  the  mere 
facts.  All  that  he  needed  to  invent  was  a  con- 
necting link  now  and  again;  and  it  may  as  well 
be  admitted  at  once  that  these  mere  inventions 
are  sometimes  the  least  satisfactory  part  of  his 
stories.  The  two  young  men  in  the  'Nabob,' 
for  instance,  whom  Mr.  Henry  James  found  it 
difficult  to  tell  apart,  the  sculptor-painter  in  the 
*  Immortal,'  the  occasional  other  characters  which 
we  discover  to  be  made  up,  lack  the  individuality 
and  the  vitality  of  figures  taken  from  real  life  by 
a  sympathetic  effort  of  interpretative  imagination. 
Delobelle,    Gardinois,    "all    the    personages    of 

132 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

'Fromont'  have  lived,"  Daudet  declares;  and  he 
adds  a  regret  that  in  depicting  old  Gardinois  he 
gave  pain  to  one  he  loved,  but  he  "could  not 
suppress  this  type  of  egotist,  aged  and  terrible." 
Since  the  beginning  of  the  art  of  story-telling, 
the  narrators  must  have  gone  to  actuality  to 
get  suggestions  for  their  character-drawing;  and 
nothing  is  commoner  than  the  accusation  that 
this  or  that  novelist  has  stolen  his  characters 
ready-made  —  filching  them  from  nature's  shop- 
window,  without  so  much  as  a  by-your-leave. 
Daudet  is  bold  in  committing  these  larcenies  from 
life,  and  frank  in  confessing  them  —  far  franker 
than  Dickens,  who  tried  to  squirm  out  of  the 
charge  that  he  had  put  Landor  and  Leigh  Hunt 
unfairly  into  fiction.  Perhaps  Dickens  was  bolder 
than  Daudet,  if  it  is  true  that  he  drew  Micawber 
from  his  own  father,  and  Mrs.  Nickleby  from  his 
own  mother.  Daudet  was  taxed  with  ingrati- 
tude that  he  had  used  as  the  model  of  Mora  the 
Duke  of  Morny,  who  had  befriended  him;  and 
he  defended  himself  by  declaring  that  he  thought 
the  Duke  would  find  no  fault  with  the  way  Mora 
had  been  presented.  But  a  great  artist  has  never 
copied  his  models  slavishly;  he  has  utilized  them 
in  the  effort  to  realize  to  his  own  satisfaction 
what  he  has  already  imagined.  Daudet  main- 
tained to  his  son  that  those  who  are  without 
imagination  cannot  even  observe  accurately.     In- 

»33 


^ 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

vention  alone,  mere  invention,  an  inferior  form  of 
mental  exercise,  suffices  to  provide  a  pretty  fair 
Romanticist  tale,  remote  from  the  facts  of  every- 
day life;  but  only  true  imagination  can  sustain  a 
Realistic  novel,  where  every  reader's  experience 
qualifies  him  to  check  off  the  author's  progress, 
step  by  step. 

IV 

It  would  take  too  long  —  although  the  task 
would  be  amusing  —  to  call  the  roll  of  Daudet's 
novels  written  after  '  Fromont  and  Risler '  had 
revealed  to  him  his  own  powers,  and  to  discuss 
what  fact  of  Parisian  history  had  been  the  start- 
ing-point of  each  of  them,  and  what  notabilities 
of  Pads  had  sat  for  each  of  the  chief  characters. 
Mr.  Henry  James,  for  instance,  has  seen  it  sug- 
gested that  Felicia  Ruys  is  intended  as  a  portrait 
of  Mme.  Sarah  Bernhardt;  M.  Zola,  on  the  other 
hand,  denies  that  Felicia  Ruys  is  Mme.  Sarah 
Bernhardt,  and  hints  that  she  is  rather  Mme. 
Judith  Gautier.  Daudet  himself  refers  to  the 
equally  absurd  report  that  Gambetta  was  the  ori- 
ginal of  Numa  Roumestan  —  a  report  over  which 
the  alleged  subject  and  the  real  author  laughed 
/  together.  Daudet's  own  attitude  toward  his 
creations  is  a  little  ambiguous  or  at  least  a  little 
inconsistent;  in  one  paper  he  asserts  that  every 
character  of  his  has  had  a  living  original,  and  in 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

another  he  admits  that  Elysee  Meraut,  for  ex- 
ample, is  only  in  part  a  certain  Therion. 

The  admission  is  more  nearly  exact  than  the 
assertion.  Every  novelist  whose  work  is  to  en- 
dure even  for  a  generation  must  draw  from  life, 
sometimes  generalizing  broadly  and  sometimes 
keeping  close  to  the  single  individual,  but  always 
free  to  modify  the  mere  fact  as  he  may  have  ob- 
served it  to  conform  with  the  larger  truth  of  the 
fable  he  shall  devise.  Most  story-tellers  tend  to 
generalize,  and  their  fictions  lack  the  sharpness 
of  outline  we  find  in  nature.  Daudet  preferred 
to  retain  as  much  of  the  actual  individual  as  he 
dared  without  endangering  the  web  of  his  com- 
position; and  often  the  transformation  is  very 
slight  —  Mora,  for  instance,  who  is  probably  a 
close  copy  of  Morny,  but  who  stands  on  his 
own  feet  in  the  'Nabob,'  and  lives  his  own  life 
as  independently  as  though  he  was  a  sheer  imagi- 
nation. More  rarely  the  result  is  not  so  satis- 
factory— J.  Tom  Levis,  for  example,  for  whose 
authenticity  the  author  vouches,  but  who  seems 
out  of  place  in  'Kings  in  Exile,'  like  a  fantastic 
invention,  such  as  Balzac  sometimes  permitted 
himself  as  a  relief  from  his  rigorous  realism. 

For  incident  as  well  as  for  character  Daudet 
goes  to  real  life.  The  escape  of  Colette  from 
under  the  eyes  of  her  father-in-law  —  that  actu- 
ally happened,  but  none  the  less  does  it  fit  into 

^}3 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

'Kings  in  Exile';  and  Colette's  cutting  off  her 
hair  in  grief  at  her  husband's  death — that  actu- 
ally happened  also  ;  but  it  belongs  artistically  in 
the  'Immortal.'  On  the  other  hand,  the  fact 
which  served  as  the  foundation  of  the  'Immor- 
tal'—  the  taking  in  of  a  savant  by  a  lot  of 
forged  manuscripts  —  has  been  falsified  by  chang- 
ing the  savant  from  a  mathematician  (who  might 
easily  be  deceived  about  a  matter  of  autographs) 
to  a  historian  (whose  duty  it  is  to  apply  all 
known  tests  of  genuineness  to  papers  purporting 
to  shed  new  light  on  the  past).  This  borrowing 
from  the  newspapers  has  its  evident  advantages, 
but  it  has  its  dangers  also,  even  in  the  hands  of  a 
poet  as  adroit  as  Daudet  and  as  imaginative.  Per- 
haps the  story  of  his  which  is  most  artistic  in  its 
telling,  most  shapely,  most  harmonious  in  its 
modulations  of  a  single  theme  to  the  inevitable 
end,  developed  without  haste  and  without  rest, 
is  '  Sapho ' ;  and  '  Sapho '  is  the  novel  of  Daudet's 
in  which  there  seems  to  be  the  least  of  this  sten- 
ciling of  actual  fact,  in  which  the  generalization 
is  the  broadest,  and  in  which  the  observation  is 
least  restricted  to  single  individuals. 

But  in  'Sapho'  the  theme  itself  is  narrow, 
narrower  than  in  'Numa  Roumestan,'  and  far 
narrower  than  in  either  the  'Nabob'  or  'Kings 
in  Exile';  and  this  is  why  'Sapho,'  fine  as  it  is, 
and  subtle,  is  perhaps  less  satisfactory.     No  other 

136 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

French  novelist  of  the  final  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  not  Flaubert,  not  Goncourt,  not  M.  Zola, 
not  Maupassant,  has  four  novels  as  solid  as  these, 
as  varied  in  incident,  as  full  of  life,  as  rich  in 
character,  as  true.  They  form  the  quadrilateral 
wherein  Daudet's  fame  is  secure. 

*  Sapho '  is  a  daughter  of  the  '  Lady  of  the 
Camellias,'  and  a  granddaughter  of  'Manon 
Lescaut' — Frenchwomen,  all  of  them,  and  of  a 
class  French  authors  have  greatly  affected.  But 
Daudet's  book  is  not  a  specimen  of  what  Lowell 
called  "  that  corps-de-ballet  literature  in  which  the 
most  animal  of  the  passions  is  made  more  tempt- 
ingly naked  by  a  veil  of  French  gauze."  It  is  at 
bottom  a  moral  book,  much  as  *  Tom  Jones '  is 
moral.  Fielding's  novel  is  English,  robust, 
hearty,  brutal  in  a  way,  and  its  morality  is  none 
too  lofty.  Daudet's  is  French,  softer,  more  ener- 
vating, and  with  an  almost  complacent  dwelling 
on  the  sins  of  the  flesh.  But  neither  Fielding 
nor  Daudet  is  guilty  of  sentimentality,  the  one 
unforgivable  crime  in  art.  In  his  treatment  of 
the  relation  of  the  sexes  Daudet  was  above  all 
things  truthful;  his  veracity  is  inexorable.  He 
shows  how  man  is  selfish  in  love  and  woman 
also,  and  how  the  egotism  of  the  one  is  not  as 
the  egotism  of  the  other.  He  shows  how  Fanny 
Legrand  slangs  her  lover  with  the  foul  language 
of  the  gutter  whence  she  sprang,  and  how  Jean, 

>37 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

when  he  strikes  back,  refrains  from  foul  blows. 
He  shows  how  Jean,  weak  of  will  as  he  was, 
gets  rid  of  the  millstone  about  his  neck,  only  be- 
cause of  the  weariness  of  the  woman  to  whom 
he  has  bound  himself.  He  shows  us  the  various 
aspects  of  the  love  which  is  not  founded  on 
esteem,  the  Hettema  couple,  De  Potter  and  Rose, 
Dechelette  and  Alice  Dore,  all  to  set  off  the  sorry 
idyl  of  Fanny  and  Jean. 

In  '  Numa  Roumestan '  there  is  a  larger  vision 
of  life  than  in  '  Sapho,'  even  if  there  is  no  deeper 
insight.  The  construction  is  almost  as  severe; 
and  the  movement  is  unbroken  from  beginning 
to  end,  without  excursus  or  digression.  The 
central  figure  is  masterly  —  the  kindly  and  selfish 
Southerner,  easy-going  and  soft-spoken,  an  orator 
who  is  so  eloquent  that  he  can  convince  even 
himself,  a  politician  who  thinks  only  when  he  is 
talking,  a  husband  who  loves  his  wife  as  pro- 
foundly as  he  can  love  anybody  except  himself, 
and  who  loves  his  wife  more  than  his  temporary 
mistress,  even  during  the  days  of  his  dalliance. 
Numa  is  a  native  of  the  South  of  France,  as  was 
Daudet  himself;  and  it  is  out  of  the  fulness  of 
knowledge  that  the  author  evolves  the  character, 
brushing  in  the  portrait  with  bold  strokes  and 
unceasingly  adding  caressing  touches  till  the  man 
actually  lives  and  moves  before  our  eyes.  The 
veracity  of  the  picture  is  destroyed  by  no  final 

138 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

inconsistency.  What  Numa  is,  Numa  will  be. 
At  the  end  of  his  novels  Daudet  never  descends 
like  a  god  from  the  machine  to  change  character 
in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  and  to  convert  bad 
men  to  good  thoughts  and  good  deeds. 

He  can  give  us  goodness  when  he  chooses,  a 
human  goodness,  not  offensively  perfect,  not 
priggish,  not  mawkish,  but  high-minded  and 
engaging.  There  are  two  such  types  in  '  Kings 
in  Exile,'  the  Queen  and  Elysee  Meraut,  essen- 
tially honest  both  of  them,  thinking  little  of  self, 
and  sustained  by  lofty  purpose.  Naturalistic 
novelists  generally  (and  M.  Zola  in  particular) 
live  in  a  black  world  peopled  mainly  by  fools  and 
knaves;  from  this  blunder  Daudet  is  saved  by  his 
Southern  temperament,  by  his  lyric  fervor,  and, 
at  bottom,  by  his  wisdom.  He  knows  better;  he 
knows  that  while  a  weak  creature  like  Christian  II 
is  common,  a  resolute  soul  like  Frederique  is 
not  so  very  rare.  He  knows  that  the  contrast 
and  the  clash  of  these  characters  is  interesting 
matter  for  the  novelist.  And  no  novelist  has 
had  a  happier  inspiration  than  that  which  gave  us 
'Kings  in  Exile,'  a  splendid  subject,  splendidly 
handled,  and  lending  itself  perfectly  to  the  dis- 
play of  Daudet's  best  qualities,  his  poetry,  his 
ability  to  seize  the  actual,  and  his  power  of  deal- 
ing with  material  such  as  the  elder  Dumas  would 
have  delighted  in  with  a  restraint  and  a  logic  the 

^}9 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

younger  Dumas  would  have  admired.  Plot  and 
counter-plot,  bravery,  treachery,  death  —  these 
are  elements  for  a  Romanticist  farrago;  and  in 
Daudet's  hands  they  are  woven  into  a  tapestry 
almost  as  stiff  as  life  itself  The  stuff  is  Roman- 
tic enough,  but  the  treatment  is  unhesitatingly 
Realistic;  and  'Kings  in  Exile,'  better  than  any 
other  novel  of  Daudet's,  explains  his  vogue  with 
readers  of  the  most  divergent  tastes. 

In  the  'Nabob,'  the  romantic  element  is 
slighter  than  in  'Kings  in  Exile';  the  subject  is 
not  so  striking,  and  the  movement  of  the  story 
is  less  straightforward.  But  what  a  panorama  of 
Paris  it  is  that  he  unrolls  before  us  in  this  story 
of  a  luckless  adventurer  in  the  city  of  luxury  then 
under  the  control  of  the  imperial  band  of  brig- 
ands! No  doubt  the  Joyeuse  family  is  an  obtru- 
sion and  an  artistic  blemish,  since  they  do  not 
logically  belong  in  the  scheme  of  the  story;  and 
yet  they  (and  their  fellows  in  other  books  of 
Daudet's)  testify  to  his  efTort  to  get  the  truth 
and  the  whole  truth  into  his  picture  of  Paris  life. 
Mora  and  Felicia  Ruys  and  Jenkins,  these  are 
the  obverse  of  the  medal,  exposed  in  the  shop- 
windows  that  every  passer-by  can  see.  The  Joy- 
euse girls  and  their  father  are  the  reverse,  to  be 
iewed  only  by  those  who  take  the  trouble  to 
look  at  the  under  side  of  things.  They  are  sam- 
ples of  the  simple,  gentle,  honest  folk  of  whom 

140 


ALPHONSE   DAL'DET 

there  must  be  countless  thousands  in  France  and 
even  in  its  capital,  but  who  fail  to  interest  most 
French  novelists  just  because  they  are  not  eccen- 
tric or  wicked  or  ugly.  Of  a  truth,  Aline  Joy- 
euse  is  as  typically  Parisian  as  Felicia  Ruys 
herself;  both  are  needed  if  the  census  is  to  be 
complete;  and  the  omission  of  either  is  a  source 
of  error. 

There  is  irony  in  Daudet's  handling  of  these 
humbler  figures,  but  it  is  compassionate  and  u^ 
almost  affectionate.  If  he  laughs  at  Father  Joy- 
euse  there  is  no  harshness  and  no  hostility  in  his 
mirth.  For  the  Joyeuse  daughters  he  has  indul- 
gence and  pity;  and  his  humor  plays  about  them 
and  leaves  them  scart-free.  It  never  stings  them 
or  scorches  or  sears,  as  it  does  Astier-Rehu  and 
Christian  II  and  the  Prince  of  Axel,  in  spite  of 
all  his  desire  to  be  fair  toward  all  the  creatures 
of  his  brain. 

Irony  is  only  one  of  the  manifestations  of  Dau- 
det's humor.  Wit  he  has  also,  and  satire.  And 
he  is  doubly  fortunate  in  that  he  has  both  humor 
and  the  sense-of-humor  —  the  positive  and  the 
negative.  It  is  the  sense-of-humor,  so  called, 
that  many  humorists  are  without,  a  deprivation 
which  allows  them  to  take  themselves  so  seri- 
ously that  they  become  a  laughing-stock  for  the 
world.  It  is  the  sense-of-humor  that  makes  the 
master  of  comedy,  that  helps  him  to  see  things 

141 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

in  due  proportion  and  perspective,  that  keeps 
him  from  exaggeration  and  emphasis,  from  sen- 
timentality and  melodrama  and  bathos.  It  is  the 
sense-of-humor  that  prevents  our  making  fools 
of  ourselves;  it  is  humor  itself  that  softens  our 
laughter  at  those  who  make  themselves  ridicu- 
lous. In  his  serious  stories  Daudet  employs  this 
negative  humor  chiefly,  as  though  he  had  in 
memory  La  Bruyere's  assertion  that  "he  who 
makes  us  laugh  is  rarely  able  to  win  esteem  for 
himself."  His  positive  humor  —  gay,  exuberant, 
contagious  —  finds  its  full  field  for  display  in  some 
of  the  short-stories,  and  more  especially  in  the 
1  artarin  series. 

Has  any  book  of  our  time  caused  more  laughter 
than  'Tartarin  of  Tarascon' — unless  it  be  'Tar- 
Urin  on  the  Alps'  ?  I  can  think  only  of  one  rival 
pair,  'Tom  Sawyer'  and  'Huckleberry  Finn' — for 
Mark  Twain  and  Alphonse  Daudet  both  achieved 
the  almost  impossible  feat  of  writing  a  successful 
ijequel  to  a  successful  book,  of  forcing  fortune  to 
ii  repetition  of  a  happy  accident.  The  abundant 
laughter  the  French  humorist  excited  is  like  that 
evoked  by  the  American  humorist — clean,  hearty, 
healthy,  self-respecting ;  it  is  in  both  cases  what 
George  Eliot  in  one  of  her  letters  called  "the  ex- 
quisite laughter  that  comes  from  a  gratification 
of  the  reasoning  faculty."  Daudet  and  Mark 
Twain  are  imaginative  Realists ;  their  most  amus- 

142 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

ing  extravagance  is  but  an  exaggeration  of  the 
real  thing;  and  they  never  let  factitious  fantasy 
sweep  their  feet  off  the  ground.  Tartarin  is  as 
typical  of  Provence  as  Colonel  Sellers  —  to  take 
that  figure  of  Mark  Tw^ain's  which  is  most  like — 
is  typical  of  the  Mississippi  valley. 

Tartarin  is  as  true  as  Numa  Roumestan;  in 
fact,  they  may  almost  be  said  to  be  sketched  from 
the  same  model  but  in  a  very  different  temper. 
In  'Numa  Roumestan'  we  are  shown  the  sober 
side  of  the  Southern  temperament,  the  sorrow  it 
brings  in  the  house  though  it  displays  joy  in  the 
street;  and  in  'Tartarin'  we  behold  only  the 
immense  comicality  of  the  incessant  incongruity 
between  the  word  and  the  deed.  Tartarin  is 
Southern,  it  is  true,  and  French;  but  he  is  very 
human  also.  There  is  a  boaster  and  a  liar  in 
most  of  us,  lying  in  wait  for  a  chance  to  rush  out 
and  put  us  to  shame.  It  is  this  universality  of 
Daudet's  satire  that  has  given  '  Tartarin  '  its  vogue 
on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic.  The  ingenuity  of 
Tartarin's  misadventures,  the  variety  of  them  in 
Algiers  and  in  Switzerland,  the  obvious  reason- 
ableness of  them  all,  the  delightful  probability 
of  these  impossibilities,  the  frank  gaiety  and 
the  unflagging  high  spirits  —  these  are  precious 
qualities,  all  of  them ;  but  it  is  rather  the  essen- 
tial humanness  of  Tartarin  himself  that  has  given 
him  a  reputation  throughout  the  world.     Very 

143 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

rarely  indeed,  now  or  in  the  past,  has  an  author 
been  lucky  enough  to  add  a  single  figure  to  the 
cosmopolitan  gallery  of  fiction.  Cervantes,  De- 
foe, Swift,  Le  Sage,  Dumas,  have  done  it;  Field- 
ing and  Hawthorne  and  Turgenieff  have  not. 

It  is  no  wonder  that  Daudet  took  pride  in  this. 
The  real  joy  of  the  novelist,  he  declared,  is  to 
create  human  beings,  to  put  on  their  feet  types 
of  humanity  which  thereafter  circulate  through 
the  world  with  the  name,  the  gesture,  the  grimace 
he  has  given  them  and  which  are  cited  and  talked 
about  without  reference  to  their  creator  and  with- 
out even  any  mention  of  him.  And  whenever 
Daudet  heard  some  puppet  of  politics  or  litera- 
ture called  a  Tartarin,  a  shiver  ran  through  him 
— "the  shiver  of  pride  of  a  father,  hidden  in  the 
crowd  that  is  applauding  his  son  and  wanting  all 
the  time  to  cry  out,  'That  's  my  boy! '  " 


The  time  has  not  yet  come  for  a  final  estimate 
of  Daudet's  position  —  if  a  time  ever  arrives 
when  any  estimate  can  be  final.  But  already  has 
a  selection  been  made  of  the  masterpieces  which 
survive,  and  from  which  an  author  is  judged  by 
the  next  generation,  that  will  have  leisure  to  criti- 
cize only  the  most  famous  of  the  works  this  gen- 
eration leaves  behind  it.     We  can  see  also  that 

"44 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

much  of  Daudet's  later  writing  is  slight  and  not 
up  to  his  own  high  standard,  although  even  his 
briefest  trifle  had  always  something  of  his  charm, 
of  his  magic,  of  his  seductive  grace.  We  can 
see  how  rare  an  endowment  he  has  when  we 
note  that  he  is  an  acute  observer  of  mankind,  and 
yet  without  any  taint  of  misanthropy,  and  that 
he  combines  fidelity  of  reproduction  with  poetic 
elevation. 

He  is  —  to  say  once  more  what  has  already 
been  said  in  these  pages  more  than  once  —  he  is 
a  lover  of  romance  with  an  unfaltering  respect  for 
reality.  We  all  meet  with  strange  experiences 
once  in  our  lives,  with  "things  you  could  put  in 
a  story,"  as  the  phrase  is;  but  we  none  of  us  have 
hairbreadth  escapes  every  morning  before  break- 
fast. The  romantic  is  as  natural  as  anything 
else;  it  is  the  excess  of  the  romantic  which  is  in 
bad  taste.  It  is  the  piling  up  of  the  agony  which 
is  disgusting.  It  is  the  accumulation  upon  one 
impossible  hero  of  many  exceptional  adventures 
which  is  untrue  and  therefore  immoral.  Daudet's 
most  individual  peculiarity  was  his  skill  in  seiz- 
ing the  romantic  aspects  of  the  commonplace. 
In  one  of  his  talks  with  his  son  he  said  that  a 
novelist  must  beware  of  an  excess  of  lyric  en- 
thusiasm; he  himself  sought  for  emotion,  and 
emotion  escaped  when  human  proportions  were 
exceeded.      Balance,  order,   reserve,  symmetry, 

«45 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

sobriety  —  these  are  the  qualities  he  was  ever 
praising.  The  real,  the  truthful,  the  sincere  — 
these  are  what  he  sought  always  to  attain. 

Daudet  may  lack  the  poignant  intensity  of 
Balzac,  the  lyric  sweep  of  Hugo,  the  immense 
architectural  strength  of  M.  Zola,  the  implacable 
disinterestedness  of  Flaubert,  the  marvelous  con- 
centration of  Maupassant,  but  he  has  more  humor 
than  any  of  them  and  more  charm — more  sym- 
pathy than  any  but  Hugo,  and  more  sincerity 
than  any  but  Flaubert.  His  is  perhaps  a  rarer 
combination  than  any  of  theirs  —  the  gift  of 
story-telling,  the  power  of  character-drawing,  the 
grasp  of  emotional  situation,  the  faculty  of  analy- 
sis, the  feeling  for  form,  the  sense  of  style,  an 
unfailing  and  humane  interest  in  his  fellow-men, 
and  an  irresistible  desire  to  tell  the  truth  about 
life  as  he  saw  it  with  his  own  eyes. 
(1898) 


146 


VI 
ON  A  NOVEL  OF  THACKERAY'S 


[This  essay  was  written  as  one  of  a  series  in  '  My  Favorite 
Novelist  and  his  Best  Book,'  appearing  in  Munsefs  Magazine.] 


ON   A  NOVEL   OF   THACKERAY'S 

AS  the  author  of  '  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin '  once 
iV  wrote  to  the  author  of  *  Silas  Marner,'  "So 
many  stories  are  tramping  over  one's  mind  in 
every  modern  magazine,  nowadays,  that  one  is 
macadamized,  so  to  speak";  and  therefore  it  is 
good  for  one  to  be  forced,  now  and  again,  to  plow 
up  one's  mind,  as  it  were,  that  the  seed  falling  by 
the  wayside  may  have  a  chance  to  take  root.  To 
let  light  and  air  into  the  mind,  to  admit  the  re- 
freshing water  that  stimulates  to  renewed  activity, 
nothing  is  fitter  than  the  cultivation  of  the  habit  of 
comparative  criticism.  For  those  of  us  who  love 
books  and  reading— if  I  may  now  leave  the  fields 
for  the  library— it  is  well  always  to  set  the  newer 
claimants  for  fame  beside  the  old  masters,  to 
measure  them  without  prejudice,  and  to  weigh 
them  in  the  equal  scales.  And  so  1  should  wel- 
come the  call  to  choose  out  of  all  the  host  of 
story-tellers  the  craftsman  whose  work  most  de- 
lights me,  and  to  deliver  the  reasons  for  the  faith 

'49 


ON   A   NOVEL   OF  THACKERAY  S 

that  is  in  me— were  it  not  for  one  insuperable 
obstacle  to  any  such  selection. 

This  difficulty  is  easy  to  define:  it  is  simply 
that  no  true  lover  of  books  and  reading  can  be 
expected  to  limit  his  liking  to  the  works  of  any 
one  author.  He  is  not  so  poor  as  to  have  only 
one  favorite;  he  resembles  rather  the  Sultan  in 
having  a  harem  full  of  them.  Mr.  Howells  re- 
minded us,  not  long  ago,  that  man  is  still  im- 
perfectly monogamoiis;  and  whatever  may  be 
thought  of  this  assertion  when  applied  to  life,  it 
is  absolutely  true  when  applied  to  literature.  He 
who  marries  a  single  book  is  likely,  sooner  or 
later,  to  weary  of  its  charms  and  to  seek  a  di- 
vorce, that  he  may  bestow  his  affection  upon 
another  subject.  Though  he  be  no  universal 
lover,  the  bookman  is  often  mutable  and  swiftly 
inconstant. 

No  man  who  can  read  and  write  and  taste  what 
he  reads  is  so  narrow-minded  as  to  confine  him- 
self solely  to  the  writings  of  a  single  author. 
His  moods  must  vary  with  the  revolving  seasons 
and  with  the  lapse  of  years.  In  the  spring  the 
Greek  lyrists  may  charm  him  who  in  midwinter 
delighted  rather  in  the  Elizabethan  dramatists. 
The  romance  of  adventure  stirs  his  blood  in 
youth;  later  in  life,  when  he  knows  the  world 
better,  he  finds  his  account  rather  in  the  novel  of 
character,  with  its  flashes  of  self-revelation.     For 

1=50 


ON   A   NOVEL   OF  THACKERAY  S 

myself,  I  have  outworn  my  relish  for  Poe's  tales, 
gruesome  or  melancholic,  although  I  esteem  his 
art  not  lower  than  I  did;  and  the  artifice  of  Sheri- 
dan's comedies  palls  upon  me  now,  although 
once  I  held  them  to  be  the  perfection  of  wit. 

To-day  the  list  is  long  of  novelists  in  whose 
books  I  can  lose  myself  with  satisfaction;  the 
list  is  long  and  of  a  most  cosmopolitan  com- 
plexion. As  I  visualize  it  in  a  column,  I  find 
American  and  British  names,  French  and  Russian. 
There  is  Thackeray,  for  one,  and  for  another, 
Thackeray's  master,  Balzac.  There  is  Haw- 
thorne, and  there  is  Turgenieff,  Hawthorne's 
rival  in  ethical  richness  and  in  constructive  sym- 
metry. There  is  Mr.  Howells,  with  his  incarna- 
tion of  the  more  sophisticated  American  as  he  is 
seen  to-day  on  the  Atlantic  seaboard ;  and  there 
is  Mark  Twain,  with  his  resuscitation  of  the  more 
primitive  American  as  he  was  to  be  discerned 
once  upon  a  time  on  the  banks  of  the  Mississippi. 

All  these  pleasure  me  at  one  time  or  another. 
I  cannot  tell  how  often  I  have  read  the  '  Scarlet 
Letter '  and  '  Smoke,' '  Henry  Esmond '  and  '  Pere 
Goriot,'  the  '  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham  '  and  the  '  Ad- 
ventures of  Huckleberry  Finn. '  To  make  a  choice 
of  them  is  frankly  impossible,  or  even  to  say  that 
these  six  are  the  favorite  half-dozen.  But  if  a 
selection  is  imperative,  I  am  ready,  for  the  mo- 
ment at  least,  to  declare  that  Thackeray  is  the 

>5i 


ON   A   NOVEL   OF  THACKERAY  S 

novelist  I  would  rather  discuss  here  and  now, 
well  aware  that  no  favorite  has  a  right  to  expect 
a  long  continuance  in  grace.  And  the  reason  why 
I  pick  out  Thackeray  from  among  the  other  nov- 
elists I  like  as  well  as  I  like  him  (if  not  better)  is 
that  I  may  thus  call  attention  to  a  book  of  his 
which  I  believe  to  be  somewhat  neglected.  I 
hold  this  book  to  be  his  best  artistically,  the  one 
most  to  be  respected,  if  not  the  one  to  be  regarded 
with  the  most  warmth.  It  is  perhaps  the  only 
story  of  Thackeray's  which  the  majority  of  his 
readers  have  never  taken  up.  It  is  the  tale  of 
his  telling  which  most  clearly  reveals  some  of  his 
best  qualities  and  which  most  artfully  masks  some 
of  his  worst  defects.  It  is  the  '  Memoirs  of  Barry 
Lyndon,  Esq.,  Written  by  Himself.' 

It  was  published  originally  in  a  British  maga- 
zine, and  so  little  liked  at  first  that  it  was  not  re- 
published as  a  book  for  many  years— indeed,  not 
until  after '  Vanity  Fair '  and '  Henry  Esmond '  had 
at  last  revealed  Thackeray's  genius,  and  lent  in- 
terest even  to  the  timid  firstlings  of  his  muse. 
"  If  the  secret  history  of  books  could  be  written," 
so  he  told  us  in  the  pages  of  '  Pendennis,'  "and 
the  author's  private  thoughts  and  meanings  noted 
down  alongside  of  his  story,  how  many  insipid 
volumes  would  become  interesting  and  dull  tales 
excite  the  reader."  'Barry  Lyndon'  is  neither 
insipid  nor  dull;  yet  its  secret  history  would  be 

152 


ON   A   NOVEL   OF  THACKERAY  S 

interesting  enough.  It  was  written  when  Thack- 
eray was  not  yet  thirty-five  years  of  age— for  he 
flowered  late,  like  most  of  the  greater  novelists. 
Born  in  1811,  he  was  married  in  1836;  and  in 
1840  he  had  been  forced  to  place  his  wife  in  con- 
finement. Two  years  later  he  made  a  tour  in  Ire- 
land, the  record  of  which  we  can  read  in  the 
'Irish  Sketch-Book,' published  in  1843;  and  in 
1844  he  followed  these  Hibernian  sketches  with 
the  full-length  portrait  of  the  Irish  Barry.  It 
was  not  until  1847  that  'Vanity  Fair'  began  to 
appear;  and  the  veracious  history  of  Colonel 
Henry  Esmond  was  not  given  to  the  world 
until  1852. 

After  these  later  stories  beamed  forth,  the 
earlier  tale  shone  with  a  reflected  light  only;  and 
yet  I  cannot  but  think  it  to  be  Thackeray's  high- 
est achievement  as  an  artist  in  letters.  Perhaps, 
if  '  Barry  Lyndon '  had  not  unfortunately  failed 
of  appreciation,  Thackeray  might  have  taken  his 
art  more  seriously  in  the  broader  and  deeper  fic- 
tions he  set  before  us  afterward.  In  them  the 
prevailing  faults  are  an  affectation  of  knowing- 
ness,  an  excess  of  sentiment,  an  obtruded  mor- 
alizing, a  tendency  toward  caricature  (due,  prob- 
ably, to  the  overwhelming  vogue  of  Dickens), 
a  looseness  of  structure  (due,  perhaps,  to  the 
mode  of  publication  in  monthly  parts),  a  confi- 
dential manner,  and  a  personal  intervention  of 

^5^ 


ON   A    NOVEL   OF   THACKERAY  S 

the  showman  constantly  reminding  us  that  the 
puppets  are  but  the  work  of  his  hands  after  all. 

In  '  Barry  Lyndon '  the  defects  are  minimized 
or  disappear  altogether.  The  knowingness  which 
is  almost  offensive  when  Arthur  Pendennis  is  tell- 
ing us  about  the  Newcomes  is  a  touch  of  char- 
acter when  it  is  Barry  Lyndon  who  sets  forth  his 
own  adventures,  appealing  to  the  reader  as  a  man 
of  the  world,  or  else  the  hero  will  not  be  viewed 
from  the  proper  perspective.  The  fact  that  Barry 
himself  is  the  narrator  prevents  any  overplus  of 
moralizing  or  sentiment.  The  confidential  man- 
ner is  proper  enough  in  an  autobiography,  which 
has  the  further  advantage  of  forbidding  the  ap- 
pearance of  the  showman  in  front  of  the  figure 
he  is  manipulating.  The  fact  that  the  book  deals 
with  but  the  chosen  episodes  of  one  man's  career 
gives  it  a  unity  not  found  in  any  other  of  Thack- 
eray's works  except  'Henry  Esmond';  and,  ex- 
cept '  Esmond,'  again,  no  story  of  Thackeray's  is 
so  free  from  caricature  as  '  Barry  Lyndon.' 

Those  of  us  who  prefer  the  impersonal  and  im- 
passive method  of  story-telling  used  by  Merimee 
and  Flaubert,  by  Hawthorne  and  Turgenieff,  in 
which  the  author  seems  never  to  intervene,  but 
only  to  set  down  the  inevitable  actions  of  his 
characters,  are  annoyed  by  the  malignity  with 
which  Thackeray  pursues  Becky  Sharp;  we  feel 
that  he  is  guilty  of  meanness  in  taking  sides 
against  one  of  his  own  creations.     We  are  dis- 

»54 


ON   A    NOVEL    OF   THACKERAY  S 

turbed  by  the  reflections  with  which  he  pads  the 
chapters  of  his  novels,  —although  we  hold  that  his 
vagabond  moralizing  is  delightful  in  the  '  Round- 
about Papers,'  since  it  is  the  privilege  of  the  es- 
sayist to  be  discursive.  Thackeray  has  a  native 
bias  toward  the  didactic,  but  no  doubt  he  felt  he 
had  the  warrant  of  Fielding,  and  claimed  the 
right  to  revive  the  intercalary  essays  of  '  Tom 
Jones.'  Yet  in  Fielding's  case  these  invocations 
of  the  muse,  these  discussions  of  the  art  of  prose 
epic,  these  comments  on  character,  were  frankly 
prefixed  to  the  several  books  of  'Tom  Jones'; 
they  were,  as  who  should  say,  a  series  of  pref- 
aces to  successive  volumes,  while  Thackeray's 
digressions  exist  for  their  own  sake,  and  arrive, 
seemingly,  whenever  the  fabulist  is  out  of  matter. 
Twice  only  was  Thackeray  able  to  conquer  this 
bias— in  '  Henry  Esmond  '  and  in  '  Barry  Lyndon.' 
These  are  his  only  novels  in  the  form  of  autobi- 
ography, whence  we  may  infer  that  this  im- 
posed on  him  a  needed  reserve.  Of  the  various 
ways  in  which  fiction  may  be  presented  to  the 
reader— the  novel  in  letters  and  the  novel  in 
dialogue,  the  novel  told  in  the  third  person  and 
the  novel  told  in  the  first  person— the  last  is 
the  best  for  self-revelation  and  for  adventure. 
Is  not  the  interest  of  '  Robinson  Crusoe'  doubled 
for  us  by  our  knowledge  that  it  is  the  cast- 
away himself  who  is  recording  his  shipwrecks 
and  his  prayers  ? 

>55 


ON   A   NOVEL   OF  THACKERAY  S 

Perhaps  '  Barry  Lyndon '  is  not  so  flawless  in 
structure  nor  so  substantially  planned  as  '  Henry 
Esmond.'  In  general,  Thackeray  gave  little  heed 
to  the  architectonics  of  fiction;  he  was  an  im- 
proviser,  as  Scott  was ;  and  the  evolution  of  most 
of  his  novels  is  fortuitous,  even  though  he  never 
repeated  the  blunder  of  the  bifurcated  plot  which 
is  the  chiefest  blemish  of  'Vanity  Fair'— as  it  is 
also  of 'Anna  Karenina.'  It  may  be  that  the 
autobiographic  form  forced  Thackeray  to  the 
forethought  he  more  than  often  shirked;  so  it 
happens  that  these  two  stories  have  each  its  own 
unity,  and  are  not  mere  congeries  of  straggling 
episodes. 

But  if  the  framework  of  '  Barry  Lyndon '  is  a 
little  less  artfully  proportioned  than  that  of 
'Henry  Esmond,'  this  is  its  only  inferiority.  In 
sustaining  the  assumed  tone  the  earlier  book  is 
far  superior  to  the  later,  and  the  task  was  far 
more  dangerous.  Thackeray  had  made  '  Es- 
mond '  in  his  own  image;  well  aware  of  his  own 
tendency  to  preach,  he  endowed  the  colonel  with 
a  ready  willingness  to  point  a  moral,  in  season 
and  out;  and  he  confessed  to  Trollope  that  the 
impeccable  hero  was  a  bit  of  a  prig.  Henry 
Esmond  is  a  perfect  gentleman  at  all  times,  and 
Barry  Lyndon  is  ever  an  unblushing  rascal;  and 
while  the  portrayal  of  the  former  was  not  diffi- 
cult to  Thackeray,  there  is  greater  gusto,  I  think, 

136 


ON   A   NOVEL   OF  THACKERAY  S 

in  the  picture  of  thie  latter,  and  a  more  consum-- 
mate  art. 

In  tlie  one  we  find  tine  life  of  a  good  man, 
whose  sweetness  and  light  are  almost  cloying  at 
times;  and  in  the  other  we  follow  the  career  of  a 
bad  man,  whose  unblushing  knavery  is  spread 
before  us  with  unfailing  irony.  As  Thackeray 
paints  the  portrait,  it  is  worthy  to  hang  in  any 
rogues'  gallery— as  the  original  was  worthy  to  be 
hanged  on  any  scaffold.  The  villain  double-dyed 
is  very  rare  in  modern  fiction,  and  Barry  Lyndon 
is  an  altogether  incomparable  scoundrel,  who  be- 
lieves in  himself,  tells  us  his  own  misdeeds,  and 
ever  proclaims  himself  a  very  fine  fellow— and 
honestly  expects  us  to  take  him  at  his  own  valu- 
ation, while  all  our  knowledge  of  his  evil  doings 
is  derived  from  his  own  self-laudatory  statements ! 
This  device  of  transparency  Thackeray  derived 
direct  from  Miss  Edgeworth,  I  think— with  per- 
haps some  memory  of  Fielding's  use  of  it.  The 
tale  of  '  Castle  Rackrent '  is  also  put  in  the  mouth 
of  one  who  is  forever  praising  those  whom  we 
despise  at  once,  although  all  our  information 
about  them  comes  to  us  from  the  self-appointed 
eulogist.  "  It  takes  two  to  speak  the  truth,"  said 
Thoreau;  "one  to  speak,  and  another  to  hear." 

Certain  depths  of  the  Irish  character  Miss  Edge- 
worth  sounded  in  that  story— its  wit,  its  humor, 
its  loyalty,  its  clannishness,  its  irresponsibility; 

'57 


ON   A   NOVEL   OF   THACKERAY  S 

and,  of  course,  Thackeray  profited  by  the  work 
of  his  predecessor.  His  book  was  perhaps  a  re- 
action from  the  more  rollicking  romances  of  Lover 
and  Lever,  at  the  height  of  their  popularity  when 
'Barry  Lyndon'  was  published;  and  it  was  like 
them  in  its  prevailing  tone  of  sadness.  About 
this  time  Thackeray  wrote  the  essay  on  a  '  Box  of 
Novels,'  and  declared  that  "from  *  Castle  Rack- 
rent  '  downward,  every  Hibernian  tale  that  I  have 
read  is  sure  to  leave  a  sort  of  woful  tender  im- 
pression." It  may  be  that  this  melancholy  it  is 
that  has  kept  many  a  reader  away  from  both 
'Barry  Lyndon'  and  'Castle  Rackrent.'  It  may 
be,  also,  that  most  of  those  who  turn  to  fiction 
for  an  amusement  insist  upon  a  straightforward 
story  that  a  man  may  read  as  he  runs;  and  they 
resent  the  needless  trouble  imposed  upon  them 
by  the  use  of  irony. 

Sometimes  I  venture  to  think  that  Miss  Edge- 
worth  has  more  confidence  in  the  device  of  trans- 
parency than  Thackeray  has,  or  else  she  puts 
more  trust  in  the  intelligence  of  her  readers. 
While  Thady  is  unfailingly  unconscious  of  the 
effect  of  his  revelations  upon  those  he  is  address- 
ing, the  mask  of  Barry  is  lowered  now  and  again, 
and  Thackeray  speaks  out  of  his  own  mouth. 
It  is  the  author  who  sentimentalizes  over  the 
widow  of  Roaring  Harry  Barry  of  Barryville, 
and  not  her  own  son  Redmond;  and  yet  per- 

.58 


ON   A   NOVEL   OF   THACKERAY  S 

haps  the  thought  might  be  the  son's  after  all,  and 
only  the  overstatement  of  it  the  author's.  The 
reflections  upon  the  horrors  of  war  at  the  end  of 
the  fourth  chapter  are  Thackeray's  own;  or  at 
least  they  were  made  by  Colonel  Henry  Esmond, 
and  not  by  Corporal  Redmond  Barry;  they  have 
merely  wandered  into  the  wrong  autobiography. 
Madame  de  Lilliengarten's  narrative  of  the 
downfall  of  the  princess  is  rather  Thackeray's 
account  than  her  own;  what  she  saw,  she  saw 
through  Thackeray's  large  spectacles;  or  her 
views  and  the  author's  seem  to  be  presented  to 
us  simultaneously,  to  combine  as  in  the  stereo- 
scope. Once  (in  Chapter  XVII  it  is)  the  author 
even  sinks  to  step  into  the  story  and  in  a  foot-note 
to  explain  that  Barry  is  no  mere  hero  of  romance, 
but  a  callous  brute;  and  this  inartistic  comment 
appears  doubly  needless  when  we  read  a  few 
pages  further  and  find  the  husband  protesting  in 
self-defense  that  "  for  the  first  three  years  I  never 
struck  my  wife  but  when  I  was  in  liquor,"  and 
asseverating  that  when  he  flung  the  carving-knife 
at  her  son,  he  was  drunk,  "as  everybody  present 
can  testify."  An  author  who  can  make  a  char- 
acter strip  his  soul  by  strokes  like  these  must 
heartily  despise  his  audience  if  he  feels  called 
upon  to  come  before  the  curtain,  pointer  in  hand, 
and  expound  the  real  meaning  of  his  drama. 
Barry  has  a  conceit  so  sublime  that  it  allows 

'59 


ON   A   NOVEL   OF   THACKERAY S 

him  to  set  down  the  most  disparaging  remarks 
against  himself  with  a  magnificent  assurance  that 
nobody  could  possibly  believe  any  such  accusa- 
tion against  him.  When  his  uncle  and  confeder- 
ate praises  his  "  indomitable  courage,  swagger,  and 
audacity,"  he  denies  the  swagger  "  in  toto,  being 
always  most  modest  in  my  demeanor."  He  is 
perpetually  boasting  about  this  modesty  of  his. 
There  was  never  such  a  braggart;  and  he  had  his 
fine  qualities,  too.  When  in  funds  he  was  open- 
handed,  as  gamblers  and  spendthrifts  are  wont 
to  be.  When  it  suited  his  purpose  or  his  whim, 
he  was  kindly;  but  when  his  own  evil  ends  de- 
manded it,  he  was  adamant.  He  respects  the 
spirit  of  those  who  withstood  him  stanchly,  and 
he  had  no  scruple  as  to  the  means  whereby  he 
sought  to  overcome  them.  He  is  the  boldest  and 
most  resolute  devil  in  all  the  novels  of  the  nine- 
teenth century— with  the  possible  exception  of 
Vautrin;  and  to  find  his  equal  we  must  pass  from 
fiction  to  fact  and  compare  him  with  that  typical 
adventurer  of  the  eighteenth  century,  Jacques 
Casanova  de  Seingalt. 

If  the  method  of  Thackeray's  book  is  Miss 
Edgeworth's,  the  model  for  its  hero  is  Casanova. 
The  stout  heart  of  the  Irishman  and  his  ignoble 
soul  are  the  Italian's  also.  In  Chapter  XIII  the 
theory  of  winning  women  by  attacking  them 
was  learned  by  the  private  of  Billow's  regiment 

160 


ON   A   NOVEL   OF   THACKERAY  S 

from  the  prisoner  of  Venice;  and  in  the  same 
chapter  the  list  of  the  women  Barry  made  love  to 
is  only  a  faint  echo  of  the  Leporello  roll  of  that 
moral  leper,  Seingalt.  The  strain  on  the  conven- 
tion of  all  fictitious  autobiography— that  the  turns 
of  a  conversation  can  be  recalled  at  will  after  many 
years— is  no  greater  in  the  recollections  of  Barry 
Lyndon  than  in  the  octogenarian  reminiscences 
of  Casanova.  It  is  indisputable  that  Thackeray 
was  familiar  enough  with  this  startling  record  of 
the  unspeakable  moral  squalor  of  continental 
Europe  in  the  years  before  the  French  Revolu- 
tion; the  name  of  Casanova  appears  once  in  the 
pages  of  this  book,  and  that  of  Seingalt  a  second 
time;  and  a  friend  of  mine  once  owned  Thack- 
eray's copy  of  Casanova's  autobiography  with  the 
novelist's  signature  on  the  title. 

Barry  Lyndon,  splendid  scoundrel  as  he  pre- 
sents himself,  is  not  the  only  broadly  limned 
character  in  the  book.  Quite  as  fine  is  the  stern 
'  veracity  of  the  portrayal  of  Lady  Lyndon,  un- 
spoiled by  any  touch  of  sentimentality.  Her  son, 
Bullington,  is  as  boldly  drawn;  and  so  is  the 
one-eyed  chevalier  (d' indtistrie) ,  Barry's  uncle. 
And  the  story  itself  has  an  unflagging  interest 
and  a  dramatic  picturesqueness  not  frequent  in 
Thackeray's  easy-going  fictions.  Perhaps  no 
single  scene  is  as  subtly  penetrative  as  Becky 
Sharp's  admiration   of   her   husband  when   he 

i6i 


ON   A   NOVEL   OF   THACKERAY'S 

thrashes  Lord  Steyne,  or  as  finely  romantic  as 
Henry  Esmond's  breaking  of  his  sword  before 
the  prince.  But  nowhere  else  has  Thackeray 
raised  himself  to  so  high  a  pitch  of  tragic  terror 
as  in  the  account  of  the  death  of  the  devoted 
princess  struggling  vainly  against  her  inevitable, 
inexorable  doom. 

With  all  these  manifold  merits,  why  is  '  Barry 
Lyndon  '  neglected  ?  It  is  ignored  not  merely  by 
the  broad  public,  which  perhaps  resents  having 
a  villain  palmed  on  it  for  a  hero,  but  also  by 
Thackeray's  friendliest  critics.  Trollope  praises 
it  briefly,  but  with  inadequate  appreciation.  Mr. 
Andrew  Lang  casually  calls  it  a  masterpiece,  and 
says  no  more.  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  says  no- 
thing at  all.  And  Bagehot  had  said  nothing, 
either;  but  one  remark  of  Bagehot's  may  partly 
explain  the  matrimonial  career  of  both  Henry 
Esmond  and  Barry  Lyndon:  "Women  much  re- 
spect real  virtue;  they  much  admire  strong  and 
successful  immorality." 

(>897) 


162 


VII 
H.  C.  BUNNER 


H.   C.   BUNNERi 

ONLY  a  few  weeks  ago  death  put  an  end  to 
a  friendship  that  had  endured  for  nine- 
teen years— nearly  the  half  of  my  friend's  life,  as 
it  happened,  for  he  was  but  forty  when  he  died, 
and  only  a  little  less  than  the  half  of  mine;  and 
in  all  these  years  of  our  manhood  there  had  never 
been  the  shadow  of  a  cloud  over  the  friendship. 
We  had  lived  in  the  same  house  for  a  while;  we 
had  collaborated  more  than  once;  we  had  talked 
over  our  plans  together;  we  had  criticized  each 
other's  writings;  we  had  revised  each  other's 
proof-sheets;  and  there  was  between  us  never 
any  misunderstanding  or  doubt,  nor  any  word  of 
disagreement.  I  never  went  to  Bunner  for  coun- 
sel or  for  aid  that  I  did  not  get  it,  freely  and  sym- 
pathetically given,  and  always  exactly  what  I 
needed.  Sympathy  was,  indeed,  the  key-note  of 
Bunner's  character,  and  cheery  helpfulness  was 
chief  of  his  characteristics.     To  me  the   com- 

1  Bom  at  Oswego,  New  York,  August  3,  1855;  died  at  Nut- 
ley,  New  Jersey,  May  1 1,  1896. 

165 


H.    C.    BUNNER 

panionship  was  of  inestimable  benefit;  and  it  is 
bitter  to  face  a  future  wiien  I  can  no  more  hope 
for  his  hearty  greeting,  for  the  welcoming  glance 
of  his  eager  eye,  for  the  solid  grip  of  his  hand, 
and  for  the  unfailing  stimulus  and  solace  of  his 
conversation. 

It  was  late  in  the  winter  of  1877  that  I  made 
Bunner's  acquaintance,  three  or  four  weeks  after 
the  first  number  of  Puck  had  been  issued  in  Eng- 
lish. In  the  fall  of  1876  Messrs.  Keppler  & 
Schwarzmann  had  started  a  German  comic  paper 
with  colored  cartoons,  and  it  had  been  so  well 
received  that  they  were  persuaded  to  accept  Mr. 
Sydney  Rosenfeld's  suggestion  to  get  out  an  edi- 
tion in  the  English  language  also,  utilizing  the 
same  cuts  and  caricatures.  Bunner  had  already 
aided  Mr.  Rosenfeld  in  a  journalistic  venture 
which  had  died  young;  and  he  was  the  first  man 
asked  to  join  the  small  staff  of  the  new  weekly. 

He  was  then  barely  twenty-two  years  old,  but 
he  had  already  had  not  a  little  experience  in  jour- 
nalism. Educated  at  Dr.  Callisen's  school,  he  had 
been  prepared  for  Columbia  College;  but  at  the 
last  minute  he  had  given  up  his  college  career, 
much  as  Washington  Irving  had  chosen  to  do 
three  quarters  of  a  century  earlier.  When  he 
took  his  place  as  a  clerk  in  an  importing  house— 
an  experience  that  was  to  give  him  an  invaluable 
knowledge  of  the  ways  of  mercantile  New  York 

166 


H.    C.    BUNNER 

—he  had  supplemented  his  schooling  by  much 
browsing  along  the  shelves  of  the  library  of  his 
maternal  uncle,  Henry  T,  Tuckerman.  He  had 
taken  Thoreau's  advice  to  "  read  the  best  books 
first,  or  you  may  not  have  a  chance  to  read  them 
at  all."  When  he  gave  up  this  place  and  trusted 
to  his  pen  to  make  a  living  he  had  his  British 
essayists  at  the  ends  of  his  fingers  and  his  British 
poets  at  the  tip  of  his  tongue.  He  had  been 
brought  up  on  Shakspere.  He  was  a  fair  Latinist, 
and  it  is  rare  to  find  a  lover  of  Horace  whose  own 
style  lacks  savor.  While  he  was  writing  for  the 
Arcadian,  another  short-lived  journal,  hehad  been 
able  to  increase  his  acquaintance  with  the  latter- 
day  literatures  of  France  and  Germany.  This 
was  an  equipment  far  richer  than  that  of  the 
ordinary  young  man  who  becomes  an  assistant 
on  a  comic  paper. 

The  early  numbers  of  Puck  abound  in  evi- 
dences of  Bunner's  manifold  qualifications  for 
his  new  position.  He  had  wide  reading  to  give 
flavor  to  his  writing;  he  had  wit,  he  had  humor, 
he  was  a  master  of  parody  in  prose  and  verse,  he 
had  invention  and  ingenuity  and  unfailing  fresh- 
ness, and  above  all  he  had  the  splendid  fecundity 
of  confident  youth.  The  staff  of  the  paper  was 
very  small,  and  little  money  could  be  spent  for 
outside  contributions;  and  there  were  many 
weeks  when  nearly  half  of  the  whole  number 

167 


H.    C.    BUNNER 

was  written  by  Bunner.  More  than  half  of  the 
good  things  in  Puck  were  Banner's,  as  I  dis- 
covered when  I  paid  my  first  visit  to  the  office. 

I  had  contributed  to  Mr.  Rosenfeld's  earlier 
venture,  and  when  the  new  journal  was  started 
I  opened  communication  with  him  again.  One 
day  I  was  asked  to  call.  The  office  of  Puck  was 
then  in  a  dingy  building  in  North  William  Street, 
since  torn  down  to  make  room  for  the  Brooklyn 
Bridge.  Mr.  Rosenfeld  met  me  at  the  street  door, 
and  after  our  first  greetings  we  passed  by  the 
printing  machinery  on  the  ground  floor  and  began 
our  ascent  to  the  editorial  room  in  an  upper  story. 
I  complimented  Mr.  Rosenfeld  on  something  in 
the  current  number  of  Piwk—l  forget  now  what 
it  was,  but  I  think  it  was  a  certain  '  Ballad  of  Bur- 
dens.' "  Bunner  wrote  that,"  I  was  informed  by 
Mr.  Rosenfeld,  who  had  a  hearty  appreciation  of 
his  fellow-worker's  ability.  As  we  toiled  up  the 
next  flight  of  stairs  I  praised  something  else  I  had 
seen  in  the  pages  of  Puck,  and  Mr.  Rosenfeld 
responded,  "That  was  Bunner's  too."  On  the 
third  landing  I  commended  yet  another  contribu- 
tion, only  to  be  told  for  the  third  time  that  Bun- 
ner was  the  author  of  this  also.  Then  we  entered 
the  bare  loft,  at  one  end  of  which  the  artists  had 
their  drawing-tables,  while  at  the  other  end  stood 
the  sole  editorial  desk.  And  there  I  had  the 
pleasure  of  shaking  hands  with  the  writer  of  the 

168 


H.    C.    BUNNER 

various  articles  I  had  admired.  He  was  beardless 
and  slim,  and,  in  spite  of  his  glasses,  he  im- 
pressed me  as  being  very  young  indeed.  He  had 
ardor,  vivacity,  and  self-possession,  and  it  did  not 
take  me  long  to  discover  that  his  comrades  held 
him  in  high  esteem.  As  for  myself,  I  liked  him  at 
first  glance;  and  that  afternoon  a  friendship  was 
founded  which  endured  as  long  as  his  life. 

A  few  weeks  later  Mr.  Rosenfeld  and  Messrs. 
Keppler  &  Schwarzmann  disagreed  and  he  left 
the  paper.  Then  Bunner  succeeded  to  the  edi- 
torship. In  those  days  Puck  was  still  but  an  ex- 
periment, and  it  was  long  doubtful  whether  or 
not  it  would  survive,  since  none  of  its  countless 
predecessors  had  been  able  to  do  so.  That  it  did 
not  die  young,  as  Vaiiity  Fair  had  died  and  Mrs. 
Grundy  and  Punchinello,  was  due,  I  think,  to  the 
fortunate  combination  of  the  caricaturing  adroit- 
ness of  Joseph  Keppler,  the  business  sense  of  Mr. 
Schwarzmann,  and  the  editorial  resourcefulness 
of  Bunner.  To  apportion  the  credit  exactly 
among  these  three  is  impossible  and  unnecessary : 
the  qualities  of  all  three  were  really  indispensable 
to  the  ultimate  strength  of  the  new  weekly.  It 
was  not  long  after  Bunner  became  editor  that  the 
circulation  of  the  edition  of  Puck  printed  in  Eng- 
lish began  to  gain  on  the  circulation  of  the  edition 
printed  in  German;  and  after  a  while  the  owners 
discovered  that  instead  of  having  a  German  paper 

169 


H.   C.    BUNNER 

with  an  offshoot  in  English  they  had  in  fact  a 
paper  in  English  with  an  annex  in  German. 
Bunner  it  was  who  acted  as  a  medium  between 
the  German  originators  oi  Puck  and  the  American 
public.  No  paper  could  have  had  a  more  loyal 
editor,  and  for  years  Bunner  put  the  best  of  his 
strength  into  its  pages.  He  had  been  known  to 
say  that,  after  his  family,  his  first  thought  was 
for  Puck. 

At  first  he  did  not  care  for  politics,  taking  more 
interest  in  literature,  in  the  drama,  and  in  art, 
and  having  given  little  thought  to  public  affairs. 
But  he  soon  saw  how  great  an  influence  might 
be  wielded  by  the  editor  of  a  comic  paper  who 
should  accompany  the  political  cartoon  with  per- 
suasive comment;  and  with  this  perception  came 
a  sense  of  his  own  responsibility.  He  began  at 
once  to  reason  out  for  himself  the  principles 
which  should  govern  political  actiono  He  did  his 
own  thinking  in  politics  as  in  literature;  he  was 
as  independent  as  he  was  patriotic.  In  Lowell's 
essay  on  Lincoln  we  are  told  that  even  at  the 
outbreak  of  the  Rebellion  there  were  not  wanting 
among  us  men  "  who  had  so  steeped  their  brains 
in  London  literature  as  to  mistake  cockneyism  for 
European  culture,  and  contempt  of  their  country 
for  cosmopolitan  breadth  of  view."  To  say  that 
Bunner  was  wholly  free  from  any  taint  of  An- 
glomania is  to  state  the  case  mildly;  his  Ameri- 

170 


H.   C.   BUNNER 

canism  was  as  sturdy  as  Lowell's.  He  was  firmly 
rooted  in  the  soil  of  his  nativity.  He  was  glad 
that  he  was  an  American  and  proud  of  being  a 
New-Yorker.  He  saw  that  creatures  of  the  type 
that  Lowell  scorned  still  lingered  on;  and  if  he 
was  intolerant  toward  any  one  it  was  toward 
the  renegade  American— the  man  without  a 
country. 

But  Bunner  was  rarely  intolerant  His  imagi- 
nation was  quick  enough  to  let  him  understand 
why  those  who  opposed  him  should  hold  a  dif- 
ferent view  of  the  duty  of  the  moment,  and  he 
set  himself  to  the  task  of  persuading  his  oppo- 
nents. He  met  them,  not  with  invective,  but 
with  an  appeal  to  their  reason.  And  this  is  the 
way  in  which  he  was  able  to  make  the  editorial 
page  of  Puck  a  power  for  good  in  the  land.  In 
its  nature  journalism  must  be  ephemeral;  and 
perhaps  it  was  to  be  expected  that  the  work 
Bunner  did  in  inciting  his  readers  to  independence 
of  thought  is  already  half  forgotten,  and  that  it 
never  even  received  the  full  recognition  it  de- 
served. 

Until  the  nomination  of  Mr.  Blaine  in  1884  Puck 
might  have  been  called  an  independent  Republi- 
can paper;  but  after  the  nomination  of  Mr.  Cleve- 
land Puck  was  an  independent  Democratic  paper. 
Bunner  greatly  admired  the  stalwart  manliness  of 
Mr.  Cleveland's  character.     He  was  like  the  Presi- 

ni 


H.   C.  BUNNER 

dent  in  that  he  had  made  no  special  study  of 
economics  until  a  consideration  of  the  tariff  was 
forced  upon  him.  This  seemed  to  him  a  question 
to  be  solved  by  common  sense ;  and  having  found 
a  solution  satisfactory  to  his  own  mind,  he 
thought  he  could  bring  others  over  to  his  way 
of  thinking,  if  he  reasoned  with  them  calmly, 
assuming  that  they  knew  no  more  than  he  did 
and  that  they  were  as  disinterested  as  he  and  as 
intelligent.  Perhaps  it  was  even  an  advantage  to 
him  then  that  he  had  taken  to  the  study  of  this 
problem  only  a  little  while  before,  for  he  had  thus 
a  closer  understanding  of  the  frame  of  mind  in 
which  the  voters  were  whom  he  wished  to  con- 
vince. Certainly  nothing  less  academic  can  well 
be  imagined  than  Bunner's  discussion  of  the  tariff. 
He  was  dignified  always,  and  direct,  and  plain- 
spoken  ;  and  above  all  he  was  persuasive— a  great 
novelty  in  the  dispute  between  protection  and 
free  trade.  Bunner  held  that  hard  words,  even 
if  they  broke  no  bones,  changed  no  man's  opin- 
ions; and  what  he  sought  was  not  an  occasion 
for  self-display  but  a  chance  to  make  converts. 
He  met  the  men  he  addressed  on  their  own  level 
and  with  neither  condescension  nor  affectation  of 
superiority;  and  his  manner  invited  them  to  talk 
the  matter  over  quietly.  In  argument  he  acted 
on  Tocqueville's  maxim  that  "  he  who  despises 
mankind  will  never  get  the  best  out  of  either 

172 


H.   C.    BUNNER 

Others  or  himself."  He  explained  that  there  was 
no  cause  for  any  excitement  and  that  the  subject 
was  really  far  simpler  than  most  people  thought; 
and  having  thus  won  willing  listeners,  he  set 
forth  his  own  views,  very  clearly  and  with  every- 
day illustrations. 

Bunner  was  at  first  not  only  the  editor  of  the 
journal,  responsible  for  all  that  went  into  it,  for 
the  letterpress  and  for  the  cuts  and  for  the  me- 
chanical make-up:  he  was  also  the  chief  con- 
tributor, as  he  had  been  when  Mr.  Rosenfeld  was 
in  charge^  What  a  comic  paper  needs  above  all 
is  not  a  group  of  brilliant  wits  sending  in  their 
best  things  whenever  the  inspiration  chances  to 
strike  them:  it  is  the  steady  and  trustworthy 
writers  who  can  be  counted  on  regularly,  week 
in  and  week  out,  to  supply  "comic  copy"  not 
below  a  certain  average.  Bunner  was  very  much 
more  than  a  mere  manufacturer  of  "  comic  copy," 
but  he  could  act  in  this  capacity  also  when  need 
was. 

Into  the  broad  columns  of  Puck  during  the  first 
ten  years  of  its  existence  Bunner  poured  an  end- 
less stream  of  humorous  matter  in  prose  and  in 
verse.  Whatever  might  be  wanted  he  stood 
ready  to  supply— rimes  of  the  times,  humorous 
ballads,  vers  de  societe,  verses  to  go  with  a  car- 
toon, dialogues  to  go  under  a  drawing,  para- 
graphs pertinent  and  impertinent,  satiric  sketches 

>73 


H.   C.   BUNNER 

of  character,  short-stories,  little  comedies,  non- 
descript comicalities  of  all  kinds.  Whatever  the 
demand  upon  him,  he  was  ready  and  able  to  meet 
it;  he  had  irresistible  freshness  and  dauntless 
fecundity.  No  doubt  very  much  of  this  comic 
journalism  was  no  better  than  it  pretended  to  be; 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  the  average  was  surpris- 
ingly high  and  the  variety  was  extraordinary. 
And  it  is  to  be  noted  that  in  even  the  slightest 
specimen  of  Bunner's  "  comic  copy  "  it  was  im- 
possible not  to  see  that  the  writer  was  a  gentle- 
man, that  his  was  not  a  bitter  wit,  and  that  he 
had  always  the  gentle  kindliness  of  the  true 
humorist. 

For  one  figure  especially  that  Bunner  evoked  in 
those  days  of  struggle  I  had  always  a  keen  liking. 
That  was  the  character  of  V.  Hugo  Dusenberry, 
the  professional  poet,  prepared  to  ply  for  hire,  to 
fill  all  orders  promptly,  to  give  you  verse  while 
you  wait,  and  to  write  poems  in  every  style, 
satisfaction  guaranteed.  This  was  a  delightful 
conception,  with  a  tinge  of  burlesque  in  it,  no 
doubt,  and  perhaps  without  the  restraint  of  Bun- 
ner's more  mature  art.  V.  Hugo  Dusenberry 
enlivened  the  pages  of  many  a  number  of  Puck; 
and  more  than  once  in  later  years  I  urged  on 
Bunner  the  advisability  of  making  a  selection  of 
the  professional  poet's  verses  and  of  his  lectures 
on  the  art;  but  Bunner's  finer  taste  deemed  this 

174 


H.    C.    BUNNER 

sketch  too  broad  in  its  effects,  too  temporary  in 
its  allusions— in  a  word,  too  journalistic— for 
revival  between  the  covers  of  a  book.  Yet  he 
had  reveled  in  the  writing  of  the  V.  Hugo  Dusen- 
berry  papers,  and  they  gave  him  scope  to  develop 
his  marvelous  gift  of  parody. 

It  has  always  seemed  to  me  that  Bunner  was 
one  of  the  great  parodists  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. Not  Smith's  'Rejected  Addresses,'  not 
Thackeray's  '  Prize  Novelists,'  not  Mr.  Bret  Harte's 
'  Condensed  Novels,'  not  Bayard  Taylor's  '  Diver- 
sions of  the  Echo  Club,'  shows  a  sharper  under- 
standing of  the  essentials  of  another  author's  art 
or  a  swifter  faculty  for  reproducing  them,  than 
Bunner  revealed  in  these  V.  Hugo  Dusenberry 
papers,  or  in  his  '  Home,  Sweet  Home,  with 
Variations '  (now  included  in  his  '  Airs  from 
Arcady  ').  There  are  two  kinds  of  parody,  as  we 
all  know.  One  is  a  mere  imitation  of  the  external 
form  and  is  comm.only  inexpensive  and  tiresome. 
The  other  is  rarer  and  calls  for  an  evocation  of 
the  internal  spirit;  and  it  was  in  the  accomplish- 
ment of  this  that  Bunner  excelled.  His  parodies 
were  never  unfair  and  never  unkind;  they  were 
not  degraded  reproductions  of  what  another 
author  had  done,  but  rather  imaginative  sugges- 
tions as  to  what  he  might  do  had  he  chosen  to 
treat  these  subjects  in  this  way.  In  other  words, 
Bunner  met  the  author  he  desired  to  imitate  on 

175 


H.   C.    BUNNER 

that  author's  own  ground  and  tried  a  fall  with 
him  there.  I  doubt  if  any  passage  of  Walt  Whit- 
man's own  verse  is  more  characteristically  pathetic 
than  the  one  in  Bunner's  '  Home,  Sweet  Home, 
with  Variations,'  in  which  the  return  of  the  con- 
vict son  is  set  before  us  with  a  few  tense  strokes. 
In  prose  he  was  equally  felicitous,  as  all  will 
admit  who  recall  the  reproduction  of  Sterne  ('  A 
Sentimental  Annex ')  and  who  remember  the 
imitations  of  Mr.  Frank  R.  Stockton  and  of  Mr. 
Rudyard  Kipling,  in  which  he  managed  to  put 
himself  somehow  into  the  skins  of  these  diverse 
authors  and  to  spin  for  us  yarns  of  theirs  of  which 
they  themselves  need  not  have  been  ashamed. 
Readers  of  '  Rowen  '  may  be  reminded  of  the  airy 
little  lyric  called  '  Imitation,'  which  begins: 

My  love  she  leans  from  the  window 

Afar  in  a  rosy  land ; 
And  red  as  a  rose  are  her  blushes, 

And  white  as  a  rose  her  hand;    I 

and  which  ends: 

This  German  style  of  poem 

Is  uncommonly  popular  now; 
For  the  worst  of  us  poets  can  do  it— 

Since  Heine  showed  us  how. 

And  yet  this  chameleon  gift  did  not  interfere 
at  all  with  Bunner's  own  originality.  Just  as  the 

176 


H.   C.   BUNNER 

painter  studies  his  trade  in  tiie  studio  of  a  master, 
so  the  man  of  letters  (whether  he  knows  it  or  not) 
is  bound  prentice  to  one  or  more  of  his  elders  in 
the  art,  from  whom  he  learns  the  secrets  of  the 
craft.  The  acute  analysis  Bunner  had  made  of 
the  methods  of  other  writers  aided  him  to  recog- 
nize those  most  suitable  for  his  own  use,  and 
thus  his  individuality  was  like  the  melancholy  of 
Jaques,  "compounded  of  many  simples."  None 
the  less  was  it  Bunner's  own,  and  quite  unmis- 
takable. In  verse  he  was  in  his  youth  a  pupil  of 
Heine's,  and  for  a  season  he  studied  under  Mr. 
Austin  Dobson;  but  he  would  be  a  dull  reader  of 
'  Airs  from  Arcady '  who  did  not  discover  that  in 
whatever  workshops  Bunner  had  spent  his  wan- 
der-years, he  had  come  home  with  a  style  of  his 
own. 

So  in  fiction  he  was  a  close  student  of  Boccac- 
cio, that  consummate  artist  in  narrative.  He 
delighted  in  the  swiftness  and  in  the  symmetry 
of  the  best  tales  in  the '  Decameron,'  in  their  deft- 
ness of  construction,  in  their  omission  of  all 
trivial  details,  in  their  sharpness  of  outline.  I 
have  heard  him  say  that  when  he  was  turning 
over  in  his  mind  the  plot  of  a  new  story  and 
found  himself  in  doubt  as  to  the  best  way  of 
handHng  it,  he  was  wont  to  take  up  the  '  Decam- 
eron,' not  merely  for  mental  refreshment,  but 
because  he  was  certain  to  find  in  it  the  solution 

177 


H.   C.    BUNNER 

of  the  problem  that  puzzled  him,  and  to  discover 
somewhere  in  Boccaccio's  pages  a  model  for  the 
tale  he  was  trying  to  tell.  And  yet  how  wide 
apart  are  the  Italian's  somber  or  merry  narratives 
and  the  American's  sunny  and  hopeful  '  Love  in 
Old  Cloathes  '  and  '  As  One  Having  Authority ' 
and  'Zadoc  Pine.' 

When  the  late  Guy  de  Maupassant  (who  was 
like  Boccaccio  in  more  ways  than  one)  suddenly 
revealed  his  marvelous  mastery  of  the  art  of 
story-telling,  Bunner  became  his  disciple  for 
a  while,  and  even  thought  to  apply  the  French- 
man's methods  to  American  subjects,  the  result 
being  the  very  amusing  volume  called  '  Short 
Sixes.'  But  so  thoroughly  had  Bunner  trans- 
muted Maupassant's  formulas  that  he  would 
need  to  be  a  preternaturally  keen-eyed  critic  who 
could  detect  in  this  volume  any  sign  of  the 
American's  indebtedness  to  his  French  contem- 
porary. Perhaps  a  little  to  Bunner's  surprise,  no 
one  of  his  books  is  more  characteristically  his 
own  than  '  Short  Sixes ' ;  and  perhaps  this  was 
the  motive  that  led  him  afterward  to  produce 
'Made  in  France,' in  which  he  undertook  lov- 
ingly to  Americanize  some  half-score  of  Maupas- 
sant's stories,  declaring  in  his  preface  that  al- 
though the  venture  may  seem  somewhat  bold,  it 
was  undertaken  in  a  spirit  of  sincerest  and  faith- 
f ulest  admiration  for  him  who  "  must  always  be, 

.78 


H.   C.   BUNNER 

to  my  thinking,  the  best  of  story-te/lers  since 
Boccaccio  wrote  down  the  tales  he  heard  from 
women's  lips."  In  a  spirit  of  tricksy  humor  that 
Maupassant  would  have  appreciated,  the  most 
French  of  all  these  ten  tales  "with  a  United 
States  twist  "  is  not  derived  from  the  French 
but  is  Bunner's  own  invention— a  fact  no  reviewer 
of  the  volume  ever  knew  enough  to  find  out. 

Like  Boccaccio,  and  like  Maupassant,  Bunner 
succeeded  best  in  the  short-story,  the  novella, 
the  conte.  His  longer  fictions  are  not  full-fledged 
novels;  they  are  rather  short-stories  writ  large. 
From  this  criticism  must  be  excepted  the  first  of 
them,  an  early  novel,  'A  Woman  of  Honor,' 
which  was  founded  on  an  unacted  play  of  his. 
He  came  in  time  to  dislike  the  'Woman  of 
Honor'  as  artificial,  not  to  say  theatrical;  and  it 
must  be  admitted  that  this  youthful  story  lacks 
the  firmer  qualities  of  his  later  works;  yet  it 
proved  that  he  had  power  to  invent  incident  and 
strength  to  construct  a  plot. 

There  was  nothing  theatrical  and  scarcely  any- 
thing that  was  artificial  in  either  of  the  novels 
that  followed,  in  the  '  Midge '  or  in  the  '  Story  of 
a  New  York  House,'  beautiful  tales  both  of  them, 
quite  as  ingenious  as  the  earlier  story,  but  far 
simpler  in  movement  and  far  finer  in  the  delicacy 
of  character-drawing.  Perhaps  the  salient  char- 
acteristics of  these  two  brief  novels  are  the  un- 

179 


H.   C.    BUNNER 

forced  pathos  the  author  could  command  at  will, 
his  sympathy  with  the  loser  in  the  wager  of  life, 
and  his  sentiment,  which  never  sickened  into 
sentimentality.  Perhaps  their  chief  merit,  in  the 
eyes  of  many,  was  that  they  were  novels  of 
New  York,  the  result  of  a  long  and  loving  study 
of  this  great  town  of  ours. 

It  was  one  of  Bunner's  prejudices— and  he  was 
far  too  human  to  be  without  many  of  them— 
that  New  York  is  one  of  the  most  interesting 
places  in  the  world.  He  enjoyed  its  powerful 
movement,  its  magnificent  vitality.  He  took 
pleasure  in  observing  the  manners  and  customs 
of  its  kaleidoscopic  population.  He  thrilled  with 
the  sense  of  its  might  to-day,  and  he  gloried  in 
its  historic  past.  For  himself  he  took  pride  also 
in  that  he  came  of  an  old  New  York  stock.  As 
he  wrote  in  '  Rowen ' : 

Why  do  I  love  New  York,  my  dear? 
I  do  not  know.     Were  my  father  here — 
And  his — and  HiS — the  three  and  ! 
Might,  perhaps,  make  you  some  reply. 

Bunner  had  discovered  for  himself  the  truth  of 
Lowell's  assertion  that  "  however  needful  it  may 
be  to  go  abroad  for  the  study  of  esthetics,  a  man 
may  find  here  also  pretty  bits  of  what  may  be 
called  the  social  picturesque,  and  little  landscapes 
over  which  the  Indian-summer  atmosphere  of  the 

1 80 


H.   C.   BUNNER 

past  broods  as  sweetly  and  tenderly  as  over  a 
Roman  ruin."  Noisy  and  restless  as  New  York 
is,  and  blatant  as  it  may  seem  to  some,  those 
who  have  eyes  and  a  willingness  to  see  can  col- 
lect specimens  not  only  of  the  social  picturesque, 
but  of  the  physical  picturesque  also.  Into  the 
'  Midge '  and  into  the  '  Story  of  a  New  York 
House '  Bunner  put  the  results  of  his  investiga- 
tions into  the  life  about  us  in  the  great  city,  to  the 
most  interesting  manifestations  of  which  so  many 
of  us  are  hopelessly  blind.  In  the  *  Midge'  he 
sketched  what  was  then  the  French  quarter,  lying 
south  of  Washington  Square;  and  in  the  'Story 
of  a  New  York  House'  he  showed  how  a  home 
once  far  outside  of  the  town  was  in  time  swal- 
lowed up  as  the  streets  advanced,  and  how  at 
last  it  was  left  neglected  as  the  district  sank  into 
disrepute;  and  the  story  of  the  edifice  wherein 
the  family  dwelt  that  built  it  is  the  tragic  story 
also  of  the  family  itself. 

Not  a  few  of  Bunner's  twoscore  short-stories 
were  also  studies  of  human  nature  as  it  has  been 
developed  nowadays  in  the  Manhattan  environ- 
ment. And  not  a  few  of  them  were  studies  of 
human  nature  as  it  has  been  developed  in  the 
semi-rural  region  that  lies  within  the  radius  of  an 
hour's  journey  from  New  York.  In  this  territory 
are  the  homes  of  thousands  whose  work  takes 
them  daily  to  the  city,  while  they  spend  their 

i8i 


H.   C.    BUNNER 


nights  in  the  country.  Bunner  had  an  extended 
acquaintance  with  the  manners  and  customs  of 
the  hybrid  being  created  by  the  immense  expan- 
sion of  the  metropolis;  and  this  was  in  fact  only 
self-knowledge  after  all,  since  seven  or  eight 
years  before  his  death  he  had  gone  to  dwell  in  the 
pretty  village  of  Nutley,  which  he  came  to  love 
dearly— and  in  which  at  last  he  was  to  die.  His 
sense-of-humor  was  singularly  acute,  and  he  was 
swift  to  perceive  the  many  shades  of  difference 
by  which  the  suburban  residents  are  set  off  from 
country  people  on  the  one  hand  and  on  the  other 
from  city  folks.  But  his  sympathy  was  broad 
here  as  elsewhere,  and  his  observation  of  char- 
acter was  never  harsh  or  hostile,  whether  it  was 
the  urban  type  he  had  in  hand,  or  the  suburban 
and  semi-rural,  or  the  truly  rural. 

Perhaps  the  ripest  of  his  books  is  'Jersey 
Street  and  Jersey  Lane;  Urban  and  Suburban 
Sketches.'  The  tales  and  essays  in  this  volume 
have  not  the  brisk  fun  and  the  hearty  comicality 
of '  Short  Sixes,'  but  they  are  mellow  with  a  more 
mature  perception  of  the  truth  that,  as  Sam  Slick 
says,  "  there  is  a  great  deal  of  nature  in  human 
nature. "  He  had  the  sharp  insight  of  a  humorist, 
it  is  true,  and  the  swift  appreciation  of  the 
unexpected  oddities  of  character;  but  he  had  in 
abundance  also  the  gentle  delicacy  of  the  poet— 
not  that  even  those  urban  and  suburban  sketches 

182 


H.   C.    BUNNER 

are  nerveless  in  the  least,  or  sappy.  'The  Lost 
Child '  is  as  vigorous  in  its  way  as  even  '  Zadoc 
Pine.'  It  is  rather  that  the  essential  manliness  of 
Banner's  writing  is  here  accompanied  by  an  al- 
most feminine  delicacy  of  feeling.  And  yet  to 
praise  'Jersey  Street  and  Jersey  Lane '  for  possess- 
ing this  quality  is  perhaps  to  suggest  unfairly 
that  his  other  prose  was  without  it.  What  I 
wished  to  convey  is  rather  that  in  this  last  book 
of  his  the  strength  and  the  sweetness  are  even 
more  harmoniously  combined  than  in  any  of  the 
earlier  volumes.  He  had  come  to  a  mastery  of 
his  tools,  and  his  hand  worked  without  faltering. 
Even  at  the  outset  of  his  career  as  a  man  of  let- 
ters, Bunner  was  not  a  story-teller  merely  by  the 
grace  of  God— as  is  many  a  novelist  who  now 
and  again  may  hold  the  ear  of  the  public  for  a 
little  while.  He  was  always  a  devoted  student  of 
the  art  and  mystery  of  narrative.  He  was  born 
with  the  gift  of  story-telling,  it  is  true ;  but  it  was 
by  thought  and  by  toil  and  by  unending  care  that 
he  made  of  himself  the  accomplished  craftsman 
in  fiction  that  he  became  before  he  died. 

Although  'Zadoc  Pine,'  with  its  stalwart 
Americanism  and  its  needed  lesson  of  indepen- 
dence, has  always  been  a  chief  favorite  of  my 
own,  probably  the  first  series  of  '  Short  Sixes ' 
has  been  the  most  popular  of  all  Bunner's  volumes 
of  fiction.     And  it  is  very  likely  that  here  again 

183 


H.   C.    BUNNER 


the  broad  public  is  right  in  its  preference.  I  can 
see  how  it  is  that  '  Short  Sixes  '  may  strike  many 
as  the  most  characteristic  of  Banner's  collections 
of  tales.  In  this  book  he  is  perhaps  more  frankly 
a  humorist  than  in  any  other;  and  Bunner's  humor 
was  not  biting,  not  saturnine,  not  boisterous ;  it 
was  not  contorted  nor  extravagant  nor  violent; 
it  flowed  freely  and  spontaneously.  Above  all,  it 
was  friendly;  it  blossomed  out  of  our  common 
human  nature. 

I  do  not  think  that  the  wide-spread  liking  for 
these  '  Short  Sixes  '  was  due  chiefly  to  their  vi- 
vacity, to  their  spontaneity,  to  their  cleverness, 
to  their  originality,  to  their  unfailing  fertility  of 
invention,  to  their  individuality— although  of 
course  all  these  qualities  were  recognized  and 
each  helped  in  due  proportion.  I  think  they  were 
taken  to  heart  by  the  broad  public  because  in 
them  the  author  revealed  himself  most  com- 
pletely; because  in  them  he  showed  clearly  the 
simplicity  of  his  own  character— its  transparency, 
so  to  speak;  because  in  them  could  be  seen 
abundantly  his  own  kindliness,  gentleness,  tolera- 
tion—in a  word,  his  own  broad  sympathy  even 
with  the  absurd  persons  he  might  be  laughing  at. 
Being  a  gentleman  and  a  scholar,  Bunner  under- 
stood the  ways  of  a  man  of  the  world  and  could 
record  the  sayings  and  doings  of  a  woman  of 
fashion;  but  being  a  man  also  and  a  good  Ameri- 

184 


H.    C.    BUNNER 

can,  he  had  a  liking  for  the  plain  people  as  well, 
and  an  understanding  of  their  habits  of  living 
and  of  their  modes  of  thought.  It  was  his  fellow- 
man  who  interested  Bunner  above  all  else;  and 
this  feeling  his  fellow-man  reciprocated. 

Perhaps  the  chief  charm  of  Bunner's  verses  is 
also  a  result  of  this  same  sympathy.  As  Hazlitt 
tells  us,  "  Poetry  is  the  universal  language  which 
the  heart  holds  with  nature  and  itself."  Often 
vers  de  societe  (the  English  translation  "  society 
verse"  is  painfully  inadequate)— often  vers  de 
societe  which  may  meet  the  triple  test  of  being 
brief  and  briUiant  and  buoyant  is  also  hard  and 
narrow  and  cynical.  Some  of  Prior's  best  pieces 
are  cold,  and  some  of  Praed's  are  chilly,  to  say 
the  least.  A  more  human  warmth  flushes  the 
equally  delightful  stanzas  of  the  late  Frederick 
Locker-Lampson  and  of  Mr.  Austin  Dobson.  It 
is  with  these  two  and  with  Dr.  Holmes  that  Bun- 
ner is  to  be  classed,  I  think— with  the  Locker 
who  wrote '  At  her  Window  '  and '  To  my  Grand- 
mother,' the  Dobson  who  gave  us  'Autonoe' 
and  the  'Drama  of  the  Doctor's  Window,' the 
Holmes  who  told  us  of  the  '  Last  Leaf  and  the 
'  One-Hoss  Shay.'  They  all  three  influenced 
him  in  the  beginning;  and  so  did  Heine  and 
Herrick. 

And  yet  if  the  '  Way  to  Arcady '  was  inspired 
directly  by   any   older   poet's   verse,    it  is   not 

185 


H.   C.    BUNNER 

Holmes's,  nor  Heine's,  nor  HerricK  s,  but  Shak- 
spere's— not  the  mighty  Shakspere  of  the  great 
dramas,  of  course,  but  the  Shakspere  of  those 
lovers'  comedies  '  As  You  Like  It '  and  '  Twelfth 
Night,'  the  Shakspere  of  the  sugared  sonnets,  the 
Shakspere  who  was  the  most  graceful  of  Eliza- 
bethan lyrists.  Or  if  it  was  not  Shakspere  whom 
Bunner  followed  when  he  sang  'Robin's  Song' 
and  when  he  took  his  bell  and  cried  '  A  Lost 
Child,'  it  was  then  those  rivals  of  Shakspere  who 
wrote  '  Drink  to  me  only  with  thine  eyes '  and 
'Come  live  with  me  and  be  my  love.'  For  a 
season  or  two  Bunner's  muse  may  have  lingered 
in  Bohemia,  but  it  was  in  the  Forest  of  Arden 
that  she  soon  took  up  her  abode,  and  there  she 
ranged  the  woodland  in  "  the  fresh  fairness  of 
the  spring."  In  the  finest  of  the  poems  she 
inspired  there  was  an  outdoor  breeziness,  a 
woodsy  flavor,  a  bird-like  melody.  A  minor 
poet  Bunner  might  be,  but  he  rarely  sang  in  a 
minor  key.  In  his  lightsome  lyrics  there  was  the 
joy  of  living,  the  delight  of  loving— and  I  know 
of  no  notes  that  are  less  common  than  these 
among  the  lesser  songsters  of  the  modern  choir. 
As  he  wrote  me  when  I  was  preparing  a  paper 
on  Mr.  Dobson,  the  '  Autonoe '  of  that  poet 
"  gives  us  the  warm  air  of  spring  and  the  life  that 
pulses  in  a  girl's  veins  like  the  soft  swelling  of  sap 
in  a  young  tree.     This  is  the  same  feeling  that 

186 


H.   C.   BUNNER 

raises  '  As  You  Like  It  'above  all  pastoral  poetry." 
And  1  think  the  praise  is  as  applicable  to  more 
than  one  of  his  own  poems  as  it  is  to  this  lovely 
lyric  of  Mr.  Dobson's.  "  Our  nineteenth-century 
sensibilities,"  he  went  on  to  say,  "are  so  played 
on  by  the  troubles,  the  sorrows,  the  little  vital 
needs  and  anxieties  of  the  world  around  us, 
that  sometimes  it  does  us  good  to  get  out  into 
the  woods  and  fields  of  another  world  entirely, 
if  only  the  atmosphere  is  not  chilled  and  rarefied 
by  the  lack  of  the  breath  of  humanity." 

Coleridge  hailed  it  as  a  promise  of  genius  in  a 
young  poet  that  he  made  a  "  choice  of  subjects 
very  remote  from  the  private  interests  and  cir- 
cumstances of  the  writer  himself."  And  this 
must  be  my  excuse  for  paying  attention  chiefly 
to  the  '  Way  to  Arcady '  and  its  fellows  rather 
than  considering  the  brisk  and  bright  "  society 
verse"  which  Bunner  also  wrote  with  ease  and 
with  certainty —  ' Forfeits,'  for  example,  and 
'Candor,'  and  'Just  a  Love-Letter.'  But  the 
merits  of  these  polished  and  pointed  stanzas  are 
so  obvious  that  they  need  no  exposition.  Yet  it 
may  be  as  well  to  suggest  that  even  here  in  the 
"society  verse,"  of  which  the  formula  is  so 
monotonous,  Bunner  had  a  note  of  his  own;  he 
ventured  his  own  variations.  And  his  were  no 
hand-made  "erses,  no  mere  mosaic  of  chipped 
rimes.      A    gay    spontaneity    informed   all    his 

.87 


H.   C,    BUNNER 

lighter  lyrics  and  helped  to  lend  them  wings. 
His  more  serious  quatrains,  like  '  To  a  Dead 
Woman,'  and  the  final  four  lines  of  'Triumph,' 
reveal  no  struggle  for  effect,  no  vain  striving; 
they  seem  to  be  inevitable. 

To  Bunner  verse  was  perhaps  the  most  natural 
form  of  expression;  and  it  is  as  a  poet  that  he  is 
most  likely  to  linger  in  men's  memories.  I  think 
this  is  the  fame  he  would  have  chosen  for  him- 
self, and  I  know  how  careful  he  was  that  his  first 
book  of  poems  should  contain  nothing  unworthy 
of  companionship  with  the  best  he  had  done. 
The  late  Frederick  Locker-Lampson  once  asked 
Mr.  Austin  Dobson  to  make  choice  of  all  his 
verses  for  a  definitive  edition  of '  London  Lyrics ' ; 
but  when  this  was  done,  the  heart  of  the  poet 
yearned  over  the  poems  Mr.  Dobson  had  omitted, 
and  so  these  were  then  gathered  into  a  second  vol- 
ume to  be  called  'London  Rimes.'  But  when 
Bunner  had  arranged  the  poems  he  proposed  to 
include  in  '  Airs  from  Arcady,'  he  consulted  three 
friends,  and  he  omitted  from  the  book  every  line 
to  which  any  one  of  the  three  had  any  objection 
to  proffer;  and  no  one  of  the  omitted  stanzas  re- 
appeared in  his  next  volume  of  verse—'  Rowen: 
Second-Crop  Songs,'  now  included  with  'Airs 
from  Arcady '  in  a  single  book  of  '  Poems.' 

'  Airs  from  Arcady '  was  dedicated  to  the  friend 
in  partnership  with  whom  he  was  soon  to  publish 

1 88 


H.    C.    BUNNER 

a  book  of  short-stories ;  but  the  final  stanzas  were 
inscribed  'To  Her.' 

.  .  .  Oh,  will  you  ever  read  it  true 

When  all  the  rimes  are  ended — 
How  much  of  Hope,  of  Love,  of  You, 

With  every  verse  is  blended  ?  .  .  . 

And  a  little  while  before  the  'Midge'  was 
published  he  was  happily  wedded  To  Her;  and 
the  dedication  of  every  successive  book  of  his  to 
A.  L.  B.  testified  to  the  perfect  happiness  he 
found  in  his  married  life.  In  time  children  were 
born  to  him,  and  three  of  them  survived  him. 
Two  of  them  died  in  infancy,  and  it  was  not 
long  after  one  of  these  bereavements  that 
'  Rowen '  was  published,  with  these  lines 
appended  to  the  customary  inscription: 

To  A.  L.  B. 

I  put  your  rose  within  our  baby's  hand, 
To  bear  back  with  him  into  Baby-land ; 
Your  rose— you  grew  it.     O  my  ever  dear, 
What  roses  you  have  grown  me,  year  by  year! 
Your  lover  finds  no  path  too  hard  to  go 
While  your  love's  roses  round  about  him  blow. 
(1896) 


189 


VIII 
LITERATURE  AS  A  PROFESSION 


[This  address  was  delivered  before  the  Federation  of  Gradu- 
ate Clubs,  at  Columbia  University,  December  28,  1899.] 


LITERATURE  AS  A  PROFESSION 

THE  best  basis  for  a  profitable  discussion  is 
nearly  always  to  be  found  in  an  early  agree- 
ment in  regard  to  the  exact  meaning  of  the  words 
we  intend  to  use;  and  in  any  inquiry  into  litera- 
ture as  a  profession  we  had  better  begin  by  try- 
ing to  find  out  just  what  meaning  we  wish  to 
give  to  each  of  the  words  thus  united.  To  de- 
fine a  profession  is  easy.  A  profession  is  the 
calling  or  occupation  which  one  professes  to 
follow  and  by  which  one  gets  one's  living.  To 
define  literature  is  not  easy;  for  the  word  is 
strangely  various,  meaning  all  things  to  all  men, 
calling  for  one  interpretation  to-day  and  for  another 
to-morrow.  But  with  the  aid  of  the  dictionary  we 
may  hit  on  a  rough-and-ready  definition  not  unfit 
for  our  present  needs.  Literature,  then,  is  the 
communication  of  facts,  ideas,  and  emotions  by 
means  of  books.  If  we  combine  these  definitions 
we  see  that  the  profession  of  literature  is  the  call- 
ing of  those  who  support  themselves  by  the  com- 

193 


LITERATURE   AS   A   PROFESSION 

munication  of  facts,  ideas,  and  emotions  through 
the  medium  of  booi<s. 

No  searching  examination  guards  the  entrance 
to  the  profession  of  literature,  and  no  special 
diploma  is  demanded  of  those  who  wish  to  prac- 
tise it.  Unlike  medicine  and  the  law,  literature 
seems  to  call  for  no  particular  schooling.  Appar- 
ently, the  possession  of  pen  and  ink  and  paper 
is  enough;  and  the  practitioner  is  then  free  to 
communicate  by  means  of  books  whatever  facts, 
ideas,  and  emotions  he  may  happen  to  have  stored 
within  him  ready  for  distribution  to  the  world  at 
large.  Every  one  of  us  is  more  or  less  trained  in 
speaking,  which  is  the  earliest  of  the  arts  of  expres- 
sion—  as  writing  is  one  of  the  later;  and  to  do 
with  the  hand  what  we  are  accustomed  to  do 
with  the  tongue  seems  as  if  it  ought  not  to  be  a 
feat  of  exceeding  difficulty.  Perhaps  this  ap- 
parent ease  of  accomplishment  is  one  of  the 
reasons  why  literature  has  only  recently  got  it- 
self recognized  as  a  profession.  Congreve  and 
Horace  Walpole  and  Byron  all  affected  to  look 
down  on  the  writings  by  which  alone  they  are 
remembered  to-day. 

Even  now  the  boundaries  of  the  profession  of 
literature  are  not  a  little  vague.  Is  a  college 
professor  a  man  of  letters  ?  Is  a  lecturer  ?  Is  an 
editor  ?  And,  more  particularly,  is  a  journalist  a 
literary  man  ?    Any  one  who  is  thrown  much 

'94 


LITERATURE   AS   A    PROFESSION 

with  young  men  about  to  make  the  choice  ot  a 
calling  is  aware  that  much  confusion  exists  in 
their  minds  between  literature  and  journalism; 
and  they  will  talk  of  "going  into  literature  "  when 
what  they  really  propose  to  do  is  to  get  on  a 
newspaper.  Even  when  they  do  perceive  some 
difference  between  literature  and  journalism,  they 
are  inclined  to  hold  that  although  it  may  be 
journalism  to  write  for  a  daily  or  a  weekly  paper, 
yet  to  write  for  a  monthly  magazine  is  "to  con- 
tribute to  literature."  But  it  ought  to  be  obvious 
that  this  is  a  distinction  without  a  difference, 
and  altogether  misleading.  The  articles  dealing 
with  temporary  themes  so  frequently  found  in 
the  monthlies  are  frankly  journalistic  in  their 
intent;  and  as  emphatically  literary  are  certain 
memorable  poems  first  printed  in  the  dailies  — 
Drake's  'American  Flag,'  for  instance,  originally 
published  in  the  ^ewYovk  Evening  Post,  Holmes's 
'Old  Ironsides,'  sent  to  the  Boston  Ad-vertiser, 
and  Mr.  Kipling's  '  Recessional,' written  for  the 
London  Times.  And  just  as  these  genuine  contri- 
butions to  literature  appeared  first  in  newspapers, 
so  mere  journalism  very  often  nowadays  gets 
itself  bound  into  books  —  the  war  correspondent's 
letters  from  the  front,  for  example,  and  the  de- 
scriptive reporting  that  enlivens  our  magazines. 

Far  deeper  than  any  classification  of  periodicals— 
the  daily  and  the  weekly  in  a  lower  group  and  the 

■95 


LITERATURE   AS   A   PROFESSION 

monthly  in  a  higher— is  the  real  distinction  between 
literature  and  journalism.  The  distinction  is  one 
of  aim  and  of  intent ;  and  there  is  a  total  difference 
of  temper  and  of  attitude.  The  object  of  journal- 
ism at  its  best  is  the  opposite  of  the  object  of  liter- 
ature; and  the  two  arts  are  in  reality  incompatible 
and  almost  hostile  the  one  to  the  other.  The 
work  of  the  journalist,  as  such,  is  for  the  day 
only;  the  work  of  the  man  of  letters,  as  such,  is 
for  all  time.  Now  and  again,  no  doubt,  what 
the  journalist  does  survives  longer  than  its 
allotted  twenty-four  hours;  and,  more  often  than 
not,  what  he  man  of  letters  does  fails  of  immor- 
tality. But  none  the  less  was  the  one  done  in 
the  full  consciousness  that  it  was  ephemeral, 
and  the  other  in  the  high  hope  that  it  might  be 
eternal. 

In  so  far  as  the  journalist  is  a  leader  of  public 
opinion,  he  seeks  to  accomplish  his  immediate 
purpose  by  arousing  and  by  convincing  his 
readers  until  they  are  ready  to  do  as  he  bids 
them.  His  chief  weapon  is  repetition.  He  says 
what  he  has  to  say  again  and  again  and  again, 
varying  his  form  from  day  to  day,  indeed,  but 
repeating  himself  unhesitatingly  and  of  necessity. 
He  keeps  on  hammering  until  he  drives  his  nail 
home;  and  then  he  picks  up  another  nail,  to  be 
driven  home  in  its  turn  by  another  series  of  in- 
cessant blows.     In  one  article  he  touches  only 

196 


LITERATURE    AS    A    PROFESSION 

one  side  of  the  case,  reserving  the  other  aspects 
for  the  other  articles  that  he  knows  he  will  have 
to  write.  He  lives  in  an  atmosphere  of  contro- 
versy, and  breathes  freely  as  though  it  were  his 
native  air. 

He  plans  no  element  of  permanence  in  his  work, 
and,  indeed,  never  allows  himself  to  think  of  such 
a  thing.  As  the  origin  of  the  word  journalism 
implies,  the  journalist  seeks  only  to  be  sufficient 
unto  the  day  —  no  more  and  no  less.  The  result 
of  his  labor  is  to  be  sought  in  a  movement  of 
public  opinion,  having  its  record,  perhaps,  on 
the  statute-book  of  the  State  and  even  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  whole  country;  but  his  work  itself 
has  perished.  Horace  Greeley  is  the  most  famous 
of  all  American  journalists,  and  his  was  a  daring 
and  a  trenchant  style.  But  whatever  may  have 
been  his  share  in  bringing  about  the  abolition  of 
negro-slavery,  not  one  of  his  assaults  on  the 
slaveholders  survived  to  be  read  by  the  genera- 
tion that  followed  his  —  a  generation  to  whom 
Greeley  was  but  a  name  and  a  legend.  It  is  the 
essential  condition  of  the  best  newspaper-writing 
that  its  interest  should  be  temporary;  and  no 
sooner  has  the  journalist  done  his  work  than  he 
must  expect  to  see  it  sink  into  the  swift  oblivion 
of  the  back-number. 

The  man  of  letters  is  almost  the  exact  antithesis 
of  the  newspaper  man.     He  seeks  above  all  things 

197 


LITERATURE   AS   A    PROFESSION 

to  express  himself — to  give  form  to  a  something 
within  him  that  is  striving  to  be  born,  to  body 
forth  his  own  vision  of  life,  to  record  once  for  all 
his  own  understanding  of  the  universe.  He  toils 
joyfully,  without  haste  and  without  rest,  never 
quitting  his  work  till  he  has  done  his  best  by  it, 
until  at  last  he  knows  it  to  be  as  perfect  as  he  can 
make  it,  however  dissatisfied  he  may  remain  with 
his  final  achievement.  The  object  of  his  effort 
may  seem  but  a  trifle  —  a  little  lyric  or  the  briefest 
of  short-stories ;  yet  he  never  relaxes  his  standard, 
believing  that  the  Tanagra  figurines  called  for  as 
keen  a  conscience  in  the  artist  as  the  Attic  marbles 
themselves.  Though  he  may  work  swiftly  when 
the  mood  is  on  him  and  the  muse  inspires,  he  is 
never  in  a  hurry.  And  where  the  journalist 
writes  every  night  what  must  be  forgotten  be- 
fore the  next  new  moon,  the  man  of  letters  may 
keep  to  himself  what  he  has  done,  even  for  seven 
years,  as  Horace  advised;  and  in  all  that  time 
he  may  bestow  on  it  ungrudgingly  again  and 
again  the  loving  labor  of  the  file. 

Thus  we  see  that  journalism  is  a  craft,  while 
literature  is  an  art;  and  that  the  two  callings  are 
almost  irreconcilable.  The  practice  of  the  one 
often  tends  to  unfit  a  man  for  the  practice  of  the 
other.  There  are  journalists,  not  a  few,  who  have 
become  men  of  letters,  and  there  are  men  of 
letters  who   have   gone  on  newspapers;   but  I 

198 


LITERATURE   AS   A   PROFESSION 

cannot  recall  the  name  of  any  man  who  won 
equal  fame  in  both  vocations.  Bryant  was  a 
poet  who  was  also  the  chief  editorial  writer  of  a 
daily  newspaper;  and  one  of  his  biographers  tells 
us  how  careful  Bryant  was  to  do  all  his  journal- 
istic writing  in  the  office  of  the  paper  itself, 
leaving  his  own  home  free  from  any  taint  of 
contemporary  pressure.  And  there  is  an  anec- 
dote of  Bryant  that  illuminates  the  conditions  of 
journalism.  A  friend  repeatedly  urged  him  to 
advocate  a  certain  cause,  and  supplied  him  with 
facts  and  arguments  in  its  behalf  Finally  an 
article  appeared,  and  Bryant  asked  his  friend  if  it 
was  not  satisfactory  —  if  it  was  not  good.  The 
friend  responded  at  once  that  the  article  was  too 
good  altogether,  too  complete,  too  final,  since 
Bryant  had  said  in  it  all  he  had  to  say  on  the 
subject,  and,  therefore,  would  not  recur  to  it 
again,  whereas  what  his  friend  had  wanted  was 
that  the  editor  should  take  up  the  case  and  keep 
on  writing  about  it,  day  in  and  day  out,  until  he 
had  really  aroused  public  interest  in  it. 

In  other  words,  iteration  is  an  absolute  neces- 
sity in  a  newspaper,  if  it  wishes  to  guide  public 
opinion.  But  in  literature  iteration  is  almost  a 
form  of  tautology.  For  example,  now  that  we 
have  Matthew  Arnold's  essays  collected  in  a 
stately  series  of  volumes,  we  can  hardly  help 
being  a  little  annoyed  by  the  repetition  of  his 

'99 


LITERATURE   AS   A   PROFESSION 

various  catch-words,  although  these  were  strik- 
ingly effective  when  the  original  articles  were 
appearing,  in  a  monthly  magazine  here,  and  in 
a  quarterly  review  there.  We  feel  that  some- 
thing perishable  has  been  obtruded  into  what 
we  had  supposed  to  be  permanent;  and  we  see 
that  even  so  accomplished  an  artist  in  words  as 
Arnold  marred  the  abiding  beauty  of  his  literature 
when  he  sought  an  immediate  effect  by  journal- 
istic means. 

And  as  journalism  is  not  literature,  neither  is 
editing.  An  editor,  like  a  journalist,  may  or 
may  not  be  a  man  of  letters;  but  there  is  no 
need  that  he  should  be.  There  is  no  reason  to 
suppose  that  a  man  of  letters  can  edit,  any  more 
than  there  is  to  suppose  that  he  can  write  for  a 
newspaper.  To  edit  a  periodical,  daily  or  weekly, 
monthly  or  quarterly,  is  a  special  art,  calling  for 
special  qualifications  having  no  relation  whatever 
to  the  special  qualifications  which  the  literary  artist 
must  have.  Some  literary  artists  have  been 
endowed  with  the  double  equipment,  but  not 
many.  Poe  was  apparently  one  of  the  few  men 
of  letters  who  are  also  born  with  the  editorial 
faculty;  and  it  is  related  that  whenever  he  took 
charge  of  a  magazine  its  circulation  soon  in- 
creased. Dickens  also  was  successful  as  an 
editor,  whereas  Thackeray  showed  no  remark- 
able aptitude,  and  soon  gave  up  the  uncongenial 

200 


LITERATURE    AS    A    PROFESSION 

task.  Although  their  fame  as  authors  must  have 
aided  them  as  editors,  what  Poe  accomplished 
with  the  Southern  Literary  Messenger,  and 
Dickens  with  All  the  Year  Round,  is  to  be  credited 
to  their  editorial  faculty,  and  not  to  their  literary 
ability. 

There  is  an  analogy  between  the  executive 
ability  needed  by  the  editor  of  a  magazine  and 
that  required  by  the  manager  of  a  theater.  The 
special  qualification  of  the  dramatist  the  manager 
is  not  compelled  to  possess,  any  more  than  the 
dramatist  is  required  to  have  the  special  qualifi- 
cation of  the  manager.  He  may  have  it  or  he 
may  not,  as  it  may  chance.  Moliere  was  bril- 
liantly prosperous  in  the  direction  of  his  own 
company;  but  Sheridan  lacked  what  was  neces- 
sary for  the  successful  conduct  of  Drury  Lane. 

Just  as  men  of  letters  maybe  editors  or  journal- 
ists, so  they  may  also  be  lecturers  or  college 
professors.  Emerson  and  Thoreau  were  lecturers ; 
Longfellow  and  Lowell  were  college  professors. 
But  it  calls  for  no  argument  here  to  show  that  lec- 
turing is  wholly  apart  from  the  main  purpose  of  the 
literary  artist,  and  that  it  is  not  the  prime  func- 
tion of  the  man  of  letters  to  impart  instruction. 
Only  a  few  of  the  lecturers  under  the  old  lyceum 
system  were  men  of  letters;  and  in  our  universi- 
ties now  only  a  few  of  the  professors  of  the  various 
literatures  are  literary  artists.     Nor  is  there  any 

201 


LITERATURE   AS   A   PROFESSION 

need  that  they  should  be,  since  the  duty  of 
the  literary  artist  and  the  duty  of  the  college  pro- 
fessor are  not  at  all  the  same. 

If  the  man  of  letters  is  not  a  journalist  nor  an 
editor,  not  a  lecturer  nor  a  college  professor, 
what  is  he  ?  By  the  definition  with  which  this 
paper  began,  he  is  one  who  supports  himself  by 
the  communication  of  facts,  ideas,  and  emotions 
through  the  medium  of  books.  But  if  we  insist 
strictly  on  this  definition,  we  shall  soon  discover 
that  there  are  very  few  who  follow  literature  ex- 
clusively. Often  literature  is  seen  to  be  a  by- 
product of  other  professions.  Literature,  pure 
and  simple,  rarely  rewards  its  followers  with 
enough  to  live  on;  and  the  most  of  them  are 
forced  to  look  to  another  calling  for  their  bread, 
even  if  they  can  rely  on  literature  for  their  butter. 
It  is  but  a  divided  allegiance  they  can  give  to 
literature,  and  they  find  themselves  compelled  to 
become  journalists,  like  Bryant;  editors,  like  Poe; 
lecturers,  like  Emerson;  college  professors,  like 
Lowell.  They  have  positions  in  the  civil  service, 
as  Wordsworth  had,  and  Burns  and  Matthew 
Arnold.  They  are  magistrates  and  sheriffs,  like 
Fielding  and  Scott,  or  physicians,  like  the  authors 
of '  Elsie  Venner '  and  of '  Marjory  Fleming. '  Per- 
haps they  have  inherited  invested  funds  sufficient 
to  support  them  without  the  necessity  of  earning 
money,  as  had  Gibbon  and  Parkman. 

202 


LITERATURE   AS   A   PROFESSION 

At  the  present  time  there  are  in  the  United 
States  half  a  dozen  novelists,  as  many  dramatists, 
perhaps  an  essayist  or  two,  or  a  poet  by  chance, 
each  of  whom  receives  from  his  literary  labors 
alone  enough  to  live  on;  and  there  are  probably 
twice  as  many  in  Great  Britain.  But  for  the 
large  majority  of  the  men  of  letters  of  to-day 
literature  is  still  what  it  was  in  Charles  Lamb's 
time — "a  very  bad  crutch,  but  a  very  good 
walking-stick. "  For  example,  when  the  Authors' 
Club  was  organized  in  New  York,  in  1882,  by 
seven  men  of  letters,  only  one  of  them  was  then 
supported  wholly  by  literature — a  novelist  who 
happened  also  to  be  the  writer  of  certain  school- 
books;  and  of  the  other  six  one  was  a  stock- 
broker, one  was  the  editor  of  a  magazine,  two 
were  journalists,  and  two  had  private  means  of 
their  own. 

However  few  the  men  of  letters  may  be  to-day 
who  are  supported  by  literature  pure  and  simple, 
they  are  not  less  numerous  than  they  were 
yesterday.  In  our  own  language  especially,  the 
conditions  of  literature  as  a  profession  whereby  a 
man  may  earn  his  living  are  far  more  favorable  in 
the  present  than  they  ever  were  in  the  past.  The 
extraordinary  expansion  of  the  English-speaking 
stock  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  the  swift- 
ness of  communication,  the  spread  of  education, 
the  granting  of  international  copyright,  have  all 

203 


LITERATURE    AS    A    PROFESSION 

united  to  pay  the  author  a  reward  for  his  work 
never  before  offered.  Shai<:spere,  at  the  end  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  would  not  need  to  be  an 
actor  to  make  a  living.  Neither  would  Moliere, 
since  we  have  also  international  stageright.  And 
Homer  would  not  be  forced  to  go  on  the  road 
giving  author's  readings, —  in  his  time  the  sole 
resource  of  the  epic  poet. 

Whether  this  will  be  altogether  a  gain  may  be 
doubted.  It  did  not  hurt  Homer's  epic  that  he 
was  rewarded  for  reciting  it  at  the  banquets  of 
the  rich.  It  did  not  injure  Moliere  and  Shakspere 
as  playwrights  that  they  were  also  players ;  of  a 
certainty  it  helped  them.  It  is  not  well  for  the 
man  of  letters  that  he  should  be  free  from  close 
contact  with  the  rest  of  mankind.  It  is  not  the 
worst  that  can  happen  to  a  genius  that  he  should 
be  forced  to  rub  elbows  with  the  common  run 
of  humanity.  If  a  poet  was  able  at  will  to  with- 
draw into  his  ivory  tower,  to  sing  only  when 
the  spirit  moved  him,  we  should  be  likely  to 
hear  his  lyre  less  frequently.  If  a  man  of  letters 
could  claim  his  share  of  some  philanthropic  en- 
dowment for  genius,  many  a  masterpiece  would 
be  missing  that  has  been  wrought  under  the 
rowel  of  need  and  the  whip-lash  of  hunger.  Per- 
haps if  Shakspere  had  not  had  to  get  his  daily 
bread  we  might  have  had  more  poems  —  and 
no  plays  at  all.     Not  always  is  it  a  man's  best 

204 


LITERATURE   AS   A   PROFESSION 

work  that  is  done  after  he  has  won  his  ease  and 
has  only  himself  to  please.  The  artist,  literary 
or  pictorial  or  plastic,  likes  to  dream  of  what  he 
would  accomplish  if  only  he  had  the  leisure;  yet 
this  is  but  a  dream  indeed.  Give  him  all  the 
time  there  is,  and  what  the  architect  is  most 
likely  to  build  may  be  only  a  castle  in  the  air. 

To  get  one's  living  by  making  the  thing  his 
contemporaries  can  relish,  this  is  a  hardship,  per- 
haps; but,  like  other  hardships,  it  has  a  tonic 
effect  of  its  own.  This  at  any  rate  is  what  every 
one  of  the  great  masters  of  literature  has  done; 
he  has  had  to  please  the  men  of  his  own  time. 
He  may  have  wanted  to  echo  Charles  Lamb's 
humorous  ejaculation,  ' '  Hang  the  age !  I'll  write 
for  antiquity!"  He  may  have  believed  he  was 
working  for  posterity.  What  he  had  to  do,  after 
all,  was  to  conquer  his  contemporaries,  to  wring 
pay  from  his  neighbors,  average  men  and  women, 
keenly  critical  some  of  them,  and  others  sullenly 
stupid.  He  had  to  go  before  the  jury  of  the  vici- 
nage and  win  a  contemporary  verdict. 

For  it  cannot  be  denied,  strange  as  it  may  seem 
to  some  of  us,  that  posterity  never  reverses  an 
adverse  decision.  In  the  long  annals  of  literature, 
there  is  not  a  single  instance  of  a  poet  or  a  play- 
wright or  a  prose-writer  being  highly  esteemed 
in  the  centuries  following  his  death  who  was  not 
popular  in  the  hundred  years  following  his  birth. 

205 


LITERATURE   AS   A    PROFESSION 

And  by  popular  I  mean  that  his  work  was  en- 
joyed heartily  by  the  plain  people  for  whom  it 
was  written.  We  hold  now  that  the  foremost  of 
the  Greek  tragedians  was  Sophocles;  and  in  his 
lifetime  he  was  the  most  popular  of  the  three. 
We  consider  Shakspere  as  the  incomparable 
artist  of  the  Elizabethan  age;  and  his  plays  filled 
the  theater  and  drew  in  the  groundlings  better 
than  those  of  any  of  his  rivals.  We  extol  Cer- 
vantes as  the  most  pathetic  of  humorists  and  the 
most  exquisite;  and  there  were  rival  editions  of 
'Don  Quixote'  in  all  the  provinces  of  Spain 
within  a  score  of  years  after  its  first  appearance. 
Dante,  Moliere,  Goethe,  each  in  his  own  way, 
was  enjoyed  by  the  average  man  of  his  own 
time.  It  is  true,  of  course,  that  we  see  more  in 
their  masterpieces  than  their  contemporaries 
could  see;  for  it  may  take  a  century  or  more  to 
give  the  proper  perspective.  It  is  true,  also,  that 
we  see  more  in  their  masterpieces  than  their 
authors  meant  to  put  there;  for  they  builded  bet- 
ter than  they  knew,  as  every  man  of  genius  must. 
It  is  true,  again,  that  in  their  own  day  it  was  their 
more  obvious  merits  that  were  quickest  appre- 
ciated, not  to  say  the  more  superficial,  and  that 
therefore  they  had  to  wait  for  later  generations 
really  to  understand  and  to  expound  the  full 
value  of  what  they  did.  The  groundlings  liked 
Shakspere's  plays,  and  the  tavern-critics  praised 

206 


LITERATURE    AS    A    PROFESSION 

his  sugared  sonnets;  but  while  Shakspere  was 
yet  alive  no  one  seems  to  have  suspected  the 
vast  supremacy  of  his  genius.  And  as  for  Mo- 
liere,  Boileau  alone  was  keen-eyed  enough  to 
have  a  glimmering  perception  of  his  overwhelm- 
ing superiority  to  the  other  playwrights  of  the 
reign  of  Louis  XIV. 

Of  course  it  is  not  every  favorite  of  his  own 
generation  who  survives  to  the  next  —  far  from 
it.  The  next  generation  has  its  own  favorites, 
and  it  delights  in  the  sacrificial  slaughter  of  the 
pets  of  its  predecessor.  The  affirmative  decisions 
of  the  present  posterity  will  reverse  by  the  dozen 
and  by  the  score.  The  negative  decisions  it  will 
never  reverse.  Therefore  if  we  want  to  hazard 
a  guess  as  to  the  authors  of  our  own  time  whom 
our  great-grandchildren  will  be  required  to  study 
in  school  as  masters  of  English,  we  must  pick 
from  among  the  authors  who  are  widely  popular 
now.  The  laurels  of  most  of  the  favorites  of  to- 
day will  be  withered  and  desiccated,  no  doubt; 
but  here  and  there  a  leaf  will  have  kept  green 
and  lustrous.  One  or  another  of  the  men  of  the 
present  will  be  able  to  read  his  title  clear  and  to 
take  his  assured  place  beside  the  masters  of  the 
past.  And  he  will  be  chosen  from  out  of  those 
whose  books  are  now  selling  widely,  and  not 
from  those  whom  the  mere  critic  delights  to 
honor.     In  the  galaxy  of  the  gods  and  demigods 

207 


LITERATURE   AS   A   PROFESSION 

of  literature  there  will  be  found  no  star  whose 
brightness  was  not  hailed  by  the  people  at  large 
while  yet  it  was  young. 

What  is  true  of  literature  is  not  less  true  of 
the  other  arts  also.  The  merit  of  the  masters  is 
felt  by  the  plain  people  often  before  the  professed 
critic  is  open-minded  enough  to  perceive  it.  And 
the  masters  themselves  are  careless  of  professed 
criticism.  As  Michelangelo  said,  the  test  of  a 
statue  was  the  glance  of  the  public  eye  in  the 
plaza.  To  say  this,  of  course,  is  not  to  suggest 
that  the  masters  ever  sought  a  present  popularity 
of  malice  aforethought  —  that  they  ever  lowered 
themselves  to  cajolery  and  base  flattery  of  the 
many-headed  beast.  They  wished  to  express 
themselves,  to  deliver  the  message  that  was  in 
them,  to  do  their  own  work  in  their  own  way, 
with  all  the  individuality  which  is  ever  a  certain 
sign  of  mastery;  and  the  plain  people  liked  them 
for  the  humanity  that  was  in  them,  for  the 
breadth  of  their  appeal,  for  their  universality,  at 
the  same  time  caring  little  for  their  technic  as 
such,  and  knowing  even  less.  Why,  indeed, 
should  they  care  or  know  ?  The  eulogy  of  crafts- 
manship is  for  the  fellow-worker  only,  who  cher- 
ishes the  difficult  secrets  of  the  trade,  and  loves 
to  enlarge  his  store  of  them.  The  wise  artist 
never  flaunts  his  tricks  in  the  face  of  all  beholders ; 
he  seeks  rather  to  hide  all  trace  of  his  processes. 

208 


LITERATURE   AS   A   PROFESSION 

It  was  a  damning  criticism  of  the  late  Steele  Mac- 
kaye  that  Mr.  Joseph  Jefferson  made  when  he 
declared  that  Mackaye  used  his  acting  to  reveal 
his  method  instead  of  using  his  method  to  reveal 
his  acting. 

It  is  well  for  the  permanence  and  for  the  variety 
of  literature  that  the  man  of  letters  should  not  be 
allowed  to  narrow  his  art  to  technic,  that  he 
should  be  compelled  to  make  a  wide  appeal,  and 
that  he  should  rely  for  support  not  on  the  qualities 
which  professed  critics  praise  in  his  art,  but  on 
those  which  the  plain  people  may  freely  find  in 
his  work.  The  man  of  letters  may  have  his  heart 
set  on  technic  itself,  and  so  best,  if  only  his 
craftsmanship  is  a  servant  of  his  interest  in  life, 
and  not  a  substitute  for  it.  "Laborious  Orient 
ivory,  sphere  in  sphere,"  is  for  the  cabinet  of  the 
collector  only,  not  for  the  glance  of  the  public 
eye  in  the  plaza. 

It  is  the  constant  danger  of  the  artist  that  he 
may  come  to  have  only  technic  —  that  he  can 
command  the  art  of  expression,  and  have  nothing 
to  express.  His  very  skill  then  tends  to  make 
him  remote  from  the  healthy,  common  mass  of 
men;  it  gives  him  a  disquieting  aloofness,  and 
perhaps  even  a  vague  insincerity  such  as  comes  to 
those  who  deal  in  words  rather  than  in  things. 
Literature  cannot  live  by  words  alone;  it  is  but 
an  empty  voice  if  it  has  no  facts,  no  ideas,  no 

209 


LITERATURE    AS   A   PROFESSION 

emotions  to  communicate.  Men  of  letters  are  to 
be  found  in  other  callings  partly  because  literature 
itself  is  but  a  doubtful  support,  and  partly  because 
in  these  other  callings  they  meet  their  fellow-men 
fiice  to  face  and  hand  to  hand,  and  so  have  occa- 
sion to  accumulate  the  facts,  to  clarify  the  ideas, 
and  to  experience  the  emotions  which  alone  can 
give  vitality  to  literature.  And  this  is  why  the  pro- 
fessions that  seem  akin  to  literature — journalism 
and  editing  and  lecturing — are  perhaps  less  help- 
ful to  the  development  of  the  literary  artist  than  the 
other  crafts  which  have  no  relation  to  literature. 

Bagehot  gives  as  the  reason  why  there  are  so 
many  wretched  books  that  the  men  who  know 
how  to  write  don't  know  anything  else,  while 
the  men  who  really  know  things  and  have  really 
done  things  unfortunately  don't  know  how  to 
write.  We  can  see  the  truth  of  this  saying  more 
clearly  when  we  recall  the  genuine  satisfaction 
with  which  we  receive  the  books  of  the  men 
who  have  done  something  and  who  —  by  a 
double  gift  of  fortune — are  able  to  write  about  the 
things  they  really  know.  This  accounts  for  the 
charm  of  the  autobiographies  of  artists  and  of  men 
of  action  —  Mr.  Joseph  Jefferson's,  for  example, 
and  Benvenuto  Cellini's,  the  'Commentaries'  of 
Caesar,  and  the  '  Personal  Memoirs  '  of  Grant. 

In  so  far  as  literature  is  an  art  it  is  its  own  re- 
ward; but  in  so  far  as  it  is  a  profession  it  must 

210 


LITERATURE   AS   A   PROFESSION 

provide  a  livelihood.  And  here  is  the  crucial 
difficulty  of  all  the  arts  when  they  are  also  pro- 
fessions. For  the  artist  works  chiefly  to  bring 
forth  what  is  in  him  as  best  he  can,  for  the  sheer 
joy  of  the  labor,  in  frank  gratification  of  the  play- 
impulse  which  is  deep  rooted  in  all  of  us.  How, 
then,  can  he  take  pay  for  that  which  is  beyond 
all  price?  When  he  has  sought  to  express  him- 
self, to  set  down  in  black  and  white  his  own 
vision  of  the  universe,  or  of  any  tiny  fragment 
of  it,  then  all-absorbing  to  his  soul,  how  can 
money  measure  the  delight  he  took  in  his  toil  ? 
Yet  this  which  was  wrought  in  secret  and  with 
delicious  travail,  the  artist  must  vend  in  open 
market,  in  competition  with  his  fellow-craftsmen; 
putting  it  up  to  be  knocked  down  to  the  highest 
bidder,  huckstering  his  heart's  blood,  and  receiv- 
ing for  it  whatever  the  variable  temper  of  the 
public  may  deem  it  to  be  worth  at  the  moment. 

And  why  not,  indeed  ?  Shakspere  did  this,  and 
Moliere  also.  And  shall  any  man  of  letters  to-day 
be  more  dainty  than  they  were  ?  Cervantes  did 
the  same,  and  Thackeray;  Hawthorne  did  it,  and 
Turgenieff;  and  their  art  was  none  the  less  tran- 
scendent, and  they  themselves  none  the  less 
manly.  They  were  modest,  all  of  them;  and 
they  never  cried  out  that  the  world  owed  them 
a  living,  or  that  the  times  were  out  of  joint,  since 
they  had  not  every  day  so  gaudy  a  banquet  as  a 

3U 


LITERATURE   AS   A   PROFESSION 

Stock-Speculator  on  the  eve  of  his  bankruptcy. 
Each  of  them  sold  his  wares  as  best  he  could, 
wondering,  it  may  be,  why  he  should  be  paid  at 
all  for  that  which  it  had  been  so  keen  a  delight 
to  produce.  Hawthorne  it  was  who  declared 
that  "the  only  sensible  ends  of  literature  are, 
first,  the  pleasurable  toil  of  writing;  second,  the 
gratification  of  one's  family  and  friends;  and, 
lastly,  the  solid  cash."  And  Stevenson  insisted 
that  "no  other  business  offers  a  man  his  daily 
bread  upon  such  joyful  terms;  the  direct  returns 
—  the  wages  of  the  trade  —  are  small,  but  the 
indirect  —  the  wages  of  the  life  —  are  incalculably 
great."  Thus  Stevenson  speaks  of  the  artist  at 
large;  and  as  to  the  man  of  letters  he  maintains 
that  "he  labors  in  a  craft  to  which  the  whole 
material  of  his  life  is  tributary,  and  which  opens 
a  door  to  all  his  tastes,  his  loves,  his  hatreds,  and 
his  convictions,  so  that  what  he  writes  is  only 
what  he  longed  to  utter.  He  may  have  enjoyed 
many  things  in  this  big,  tragic  playground  of  the 
world;  but  what  shall  he  have  enjoyed  more.?" 
The  true  artist  dreams  of  a  remote  millennium 
when 

Only  the   Master  shall  praise  us,  and  only  the  Master  shall 

blame; 
And  no  one  shall  work  for  money,  and  no  one  shall  work 

for  fame, 
But  each  for  the  joy  of  the  working  .  .  , 

212 


LITERATURE    AS    A    PROFESSION 

Yet,  if  we  can  judge  by  the  history  of  the  past, 
it  is  better  for  the  artist  himself  that  this  should 
remain  a  dream  only,  and  that  he,  having  worked 
for  the  joy  of  the  working,  shall  then  take  his 
wages  in  money,  like  the  rest  of  us.  It  is  better 
that  he  should  not  be  tenant-at-will  of  a  separate 
star  of  his  own,  but  a  resident  of  this  workaday 
world  where  his  fellow-man  has  a  residence  also. 
It  is  best  that  he  should  be  forced  to  face  the 
realities  of  existence,  and  first  of  all  to  have  the 
delight  of  his  labor,  and  then  to  take  the  hire  of 
which  the  laborer  is  worthy. 

The  profession  of  literature  is  not  for  those  who 
do  not  relish  its  toil  and  who  do  not  love  it 
for  its  own  sake.  It  is  not  for  those  who  are 
thinking  rather  of  the  wages  than  of  the  work. 
Above  all,  it  is  not  for  those  who  have  a  high 
standard  of  wages  and  a  low  standard  of  work. 

(1899) 


213 


IX 

THE  RELATION  OF  THE  DRAMA 
TO  LITERATURE 


[This  paper  was  read  before  the  Modern  Language  Association, 
at  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  in  December,  1897.] 


THE   RELATION   OF  THE  DRAMA  TO 
LITERATURE 

THE  invention  of  printing  and  the  extension 
of  education  have  given  immense  influence 
to  the  art  of  writing;  and  hence  has  come  about  a 
tendency  to  judge  the  other  arts  by  the  principles 
that  govern  literature.  Rarely  do  we  find  a  man 
of  letters  who  is  not  ready  with  his  opinion  of 
the  picture  in  the  gallery,  of  the  statue  in  the 
square,  or  of  the  play  in  the  theater;  and  fre- 
quently his  criticism  is  purely  literary,  being 
supported  by  no  special  study  of  any  other  art 
than  literature,  and  being  sustained  by  no  famil- 
iarity with  the  principles  of  painting,  of  sculp- 
ture, or  of  the  drama.  Generally  the  man  of 
letters  is  lacking  in  appreciation  of  the  individual- 
ity of  each  of  these  several  arts,  of  the  essential 
qualities  of  each  peculiar  to  it  alone  and  there- 
fore most  relished  by  those  who  can  recognize 
this.  In  a  picture  the  man  of  letters  sees  chiefly 
the  story,  the  sentiment,  the  thought:  he  has 
little  desire  and  little  knowledge  to  weigh  the 

217 


THE   RELATION   OF   THE    DRAMA   TO    LITERATURE 

merits  of  technic,  by  which  alone  the  various 
arts  are  differentiated  one  from  the  other. 

The  painters  have  long  protested  against  any 
judgment  of  their  work  in  accordance  with  the 
principles  of  another  art;  and  at  last  they  have 
succeeded  in  convincing  the  more  open-minded 
of  us  that  what  is  of  prime  importance  in  a  pic- 
ture is  the  way  in  which  it  is  painted,  and  that 
its  merely  literary  merit  is  quite  secondary.  They 
are  not  unreasonable  when  they  insist  that  the 
chief  duty  of  a  picture  is  to  represent  the  visible 
world,  not  to  point  a  moral  or  adorn  a  tale,  and 
that  in  the  appreciation  of  a  picture  we  must 
weigh  first  of  all  its  pictorial  beauty.  Nor  are  the 
sculptors  asking  too  much  when  in  a  statue  they 
want  us  to  consider  chiefly  its  plastic  beauty. 

What  has  been  granted  to  the  painter  and 
the  sculptor,  the  orator  and  the  dramatist  ask  for 
themselves :  they  request  that  an  oration  or  a  \ 
drama  shall  be  judged,  not  as  literature  only,  but 
also  in  accordance  with  the  principles  of  its  own 
art.  And  here  the  literary  critic  is  even  less  will- 
ing to  yield.  He  may  acknowledge  his  own 
ignorance  of  perspective  and  of  pigments,  of 
composition  and  of  modeling;  he  may  confess 
that  here  the  painter  and  the  sculptor  have  him  at 
a  disadvantage;  but  he  is  not  ready  to  admit  that 
he  is  not  to  apply  his  own  standards  to  the  works 
of  the  orator  and  of  the  dramatist.     On  the  con- 

218 


THE   RELATION   OF   THE   DRAMA   TO    LITERATURE 

trary,  he  maintains  that  the  speech  and  the  play, 
if  they  belong  to  literature  at  all,  are,  by  that  very 
fact,  absolutely  within  the  province  of  the  literary 
critic.  He  cannot  see  why  that  which  the  orator 
and  the  dramatist  may  write  is  not  to  be  read 
and  criticized  exactly  as  that  which  is  written  by 
the  novelist  and  the  essayist  and  the  poet.  In- 
deed, it  is  almost  a  misrepresentation  of  the 
literary  critic's  attitude  to  suggest  that  he  has 
need  to  maintain  this  position:  for  it  is  rarely 
even  hinted  to  him  that  he  is  not  fully  justified 
in  employing  the  same  tests  in  every  department 
of  literature. 

Yet  nothing  ought  to  be  clearer  than  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  written  word  and  the 
spoken  —  between  the  literature  which  is  ad- 
dressed to  the  eye  alone  and  that  which  is  in- 
tended primarily  for  the  ear  and  only  secondarily 
for  the  eye.  It  is  the  difference  between  words 
written  once  for  all  and  words  first  spoken  and 
then  written  —  or  at  least  written  so  that  they 
may  be  spoken.  When  this  distinction  is  seized, 
it  follows  that  oral  discourse  is  not  necessarily  to 
be  estimated  by  the  same  tests  as  written  dis- 
course. It  follows  also  that  the  speech  and  the 
play  may  be  very  good  indeed,  each  in  its  kind, 
although  they  may  fail  to  attain  the  standard  of 
strictly  hterary  merit  which  we  should  demand 
in  an  essay,  a  story,  or  a  poem. 

219 


THE   RELATION   OF   THE    DRAMA   TO   LITERATURE 

"Much  of  the  ancient  criticism  of  oratory,"  says 
Professor  Jebb,  "is  tainted  by  a  radical  vice. 
The  ancient  critics  too  often  confound  literary 
merit  with  oratorical  merit.  They  judge  too 
much  from  the  standpoint  of  the  reader,  and  too 
little  from  the  standpoint  of  the  hearer,"  For  a 
just  estimate  of  the  rank  of  a  speaker,  "the  first 
thing  necessary,"  the  same  authority  continues, 
"  is  an  effort  of  imaginative  sympathy.  We  must 
not  merely  analyze  his  style:  w^e  must  try  to 
realize  the  effect  which  some  one  of  his  speeches, 
as  a  whole,  would  have  made  on  a  given  audi- 
ence in  given  circumstances."  It  is  this  effort  of 
imaginative  sympathy  which  Scherer  refused  to 
make  when  he  sought  to  show  that  Moliere  often 
wrote  bad  French.  Looking  at  some  of  the 
scenes  of  the  great  comic  dramatist  from  a  purely 
literary  standpoint,  the  critic  found  many  faults; 
but  these  blemishes  to  the  eye  when  the  words 
were  read  in  the  study  were,  many  of  them, 
beauties  to  the  ear  when  the  words  were  spoken 
on  the  stage. 

The  dramatist  and  the  orator  are  bound  by 
many  of  the  same  conditions;  and  one  of  these 
is  inexorable:  Each  of  them  must  please  his  im- 
mediate audience.  The  poet  can  appeal  to  pos- 
terity ;  but  if  the  orator  does  not  hold  the  atten- 
tion of  those  whom  he  is  addressing,  his  speech 
is  a  failure  then  and  there,  no  matter  how  highly 

220 


THE   RELATION   OF   THE   DRAMA   TO   LITERATURE 

posterity  may  esteem  it.  The  sermon  accom- 
plishes its  purpose  adequately  if  it  moves  the 
congregation  that  listens  to  it;  and  so  does  a 
comedy  if  it  amuses  the  spectators  that  see  it. 
If  a  speaker  holds  his  hearers  in  the  hollow  of  his 
hand  while  he  is  talking  to  them,  and  if  he  makes 
them  thrill  and  throb  with  his  words,  then  he 
has  done  what  he  set  out  to  do,  even  if  his 
words,  when  reproduced  in  cold  type,  fail  abso- 
lutely to  explain  his  success. 

To  affect  his  hearers  is  the  first  duty  of  the 
orator:  to  move  his  readers  follows  a  long  way 
after.  That  an  oration  should  produce  the  same 
effect  on  both  hearer  and  reader  is  almost  impos- 
sible: so  competent  a  critic  as  Fox  declared  it  to 
be  quite  impossible.  When  a  certain  speech 
was  praised  to  him,  he  asked,  "Does  it  read  well  ? 
—  because,  be  sure,  if  it  does,  it  is  a  very  bad 
speech."  This  is  a  hard  saying.  Indeed,  we 
need  not  hesitate  to  call  it  an  overstatement,  if 
we  let  our  memory  dwell  on  the  oration  of  De- 
mosthenes on  the  Crown,  on  Cicero's  denuncia- 
tion of  Catiline,  on  Webster's  reply  to  Hayne, 
and  on  Lincoln's  Gettysburg  Address.  But,  like 
other  overstatements,  it  may  serve  a  useful  pur- 
pose in  putting  into  strong  relief  a  side  of  the 
case  which  few  of  us  see  clearly.  Lacordaire, 
a  critic  of  eloquence  as  competent  as  Fox,  is  in 
substantial  agreement  with  him.     "The  orator 

22  1 


THE   RELATION   OF   THE   DRAMA   TO  LITERATURE 

and  the  audience  are  two  brothers,"  he  declares, 
"who  are  born  and  who  die  the  same  day." 

Perhaps  cleverness  is  the  final  adjective  to 
characterize  Cicero;  and  certainly  nothing  could 
be  cleverer  than  the  skill  with  which  the  Roman 
rhetorician  was  able  to  meet  the  double  demand 
on  the  orator  —  if  we  may  accept  the  suggestion 
of  the  late  M.  Goumy.  The  French  critic  main- 
tained that  the  circumstances  of  the  political 
situation  in  Rome  made  it  physically  impossible 
that  Cicero  could  have  delivered  the  diatribes 
against  Catiline  as  they  are  preserved  to  us. 
They  are  too  ornate  to  have  been  extemporized 
in  the  brief  snatches  of  time  at  Cicero's  command, 
and  they  are  too  long  to  have  been  endured  by 
the  impatient  senate,  restless  at  the  crisis  in  the 
affairs  of  the  republic.  As  the  officer  of  state 
charged  with  the  duty  of  discovering  and  putting 
down  a  conspiracy,  Cicero  no  doubt  made 
speeches  to  the  senate;  but  what  he  actually  said 
then  —  excellent  as  it  was  for  its  immediate  pur- 
pose—  can  have  been  but  a  hasty  outline  of 
the  successive  orations  as  we  have  them  now. 
Cicero  was  a  born  orator  and  a  most  accom- 
plished master  of  the  craft.  No  doubt  the  off- 
hand speeches  in  which  he  reported  the  result 
of  his  detective  work,  and  in  which  he  solemnly 
set  forth  the  awful  dangers  menacing  the  com- 
monwealth—  no    doubt    these    speeches    were 

223 


THE   RELATION   OF   THE   DRAMA   TO   LITERATURE 

vifforous  and  adroit,  and  aroused  to  enthusiasm 
those  who  heard  them  delivered  by  the  impas- 
sioned consul.  But,  as  soon  as  he  had  leisure, 
Cicero  began  to  polish  what  he  had  said;  and  he 
did  not  leave  it  till  he  had  made  it  what  he  would 
like  to  have  said;  thus  combining  the  advantages 
of  the  impromptu  with  those  of  sober  second 
thought  —  the  wit  of  the  staircase,  as  the  French 
term  it. 

As  we  are  in  the  habit  of  recalling  only  the 
orations  which  are  endowed  with  remarkable 
literary  merit,  we  are  naturally  inclined  to  at- 
tribute to  this  literary  merit  their  effectiveness 
when  spoken,  instead  of  seeking  beneath  the 
mere  literature  for  the  purely  oratorical  qualities 
which  alone  can  account  for  their  original  success. 
To  this  day  we  read  with  delight  what  Demos- 
thenes said  in  Athens,  what  Cicero  said  in  Rome, 
what  Webster  said  in  the  Capitol,  and  what 
Lincoln  said  on  the  battle-field.  But  the  Greek 
orator  and  the  Roman  and  the  two  Americans 
were  none  of  them  thinking  of  us  when  they 
stood  up  to  speak.  Each  of  them  was  thinking 
of  the  men  to  whom  he  was  speaking  at  that 
moment:  he  was  addressing  himself  to  those 
who  were  actually  within  sound  of  his  voice  and 
who  were  to  be  moved  to  action  by  the  words 
he  was  about  to  speak.  If  he  should  accomplish 
his  immediate  purpose  he  would  be  amply  satis- 

223 


THE   RELATION   OF   THE   DRAMA   TO   LITERATURE 

fled ;  and  if  his  sentences  sliould  also  reverberate 
through  time — this  would  be  but  a  surplusage 
of  reward.  The  primary  appeal  was  to  those 
who  were  listening  then ;  and  the  appeal  to  those 
who  may  read  now  is  secondary  and  quite 
subsidiary. 

To  set  up  the  immediate  effect  of  the  oration 
upon  the  audience  as  the  chief  test  of  the  orator 
may,  to  some,  seem  narrow.  But  in  so  far  as  a 
man  comes  forward  as  a  speaker  it  is  surely  not 
unfair  to  judge  him  as  a  speaker.  And  the  first 
duty  of  an  orator  is  to  hold  the  attention  of  those 
he  is  addressing — or  else  why  take  the  trouble 
of  speaking  at  all  ?  Why  not  ask  leave  to  print 
and  be  done  with  it  ?  Why  go  through  the 
empty  form  of  appealing  to  the  ear,  when  the  real 
intention  is  to  appeal  to  the  eye  ? 

Some  of  the  finest  orations  of  Isocrates  were 
apparently  never  delivered;  they  seem,  indeed, 
although  strictly  oratorical  in  form,  to  have  been 
intended  from  the  first  to  be  read  rather  than  re- 
cited; and  when  we  remember  how  important  a 
part  in  the  development  of  Greek  prose  was 
played  by  Greek  oratory,  we  may  even  question 
whether  Isocrates  is  fairly  to  be  reckoned  among 
the  orators.  But  some  of  the  finest  orations  of 
Burke  might  as  well  not  have  been  spoken,  for 
all  the  good  their  delivery  accomplished.  Burke's 
speeches  are  an  inexhaustible  storehouse  of  politi- 


THE  RELATION   OF   THE   DRAMA   TO   LITERATURE 

cal  wisdom  from  which  succeeding  generations 
will  continue  to  help  themselves.  But  if  we 
apply  the  test  of  immediate  effectiveness  upon 
the  audience  addressed,  we  are  compelled  to 
deny  to  Burke  the  rank  of  a  great  orator.  It  is 
not  a  question  of  the  matter  of  his  speech:  it  is  a 
question  of  the  manner  of  the  speaker. 

It  is  quite  inconceivable  that  a  great  orator 
should  put  to  flight  those  whom  he  wished  to 
bring  over  to  his  way  of  thinking;  yet  this  is 
what  Burke  did,  not  once  only,  but  often.  When 
he  arose  to  address  the  Commons,  the  House 
emptied  itself.  He  might  "wind  into  his  subject 
like  a  serpent";  but  his  fellow-members  fled 
swiftly  to  escape  the  fate  of  Laocoon.  He  was 
called  the  "dinner-bell";  and  his  friend  Gold- 
smith has  recorded  that  he 

still  went  on  refining, 
And  thought  of  convincing  while  they  thought  of  dining. 

Mr.  John  Morley  judges  that  perhaps  the  greatest 
speech  Burke  ever  made  was  that  on  conciliation 
with  America — "the  wisest  in  its  temper,  the 
most  closely  logical  in  its  reasoning,  the  amplest 
in  appropriate  topics,  the  most  generous  and 
conciliatory  in  the  substance  of  its  appeals.  Yet 
Erskine,  who  was  in  the  house  when  this  was 
delivered,   said  that  it  drove  everybody  away, 

225 


THE   RELATION   OF   THE   DRAMA   TO    LITERATURE 

including  people  who,  when  they  came  to  read 
it,  read  it  over  and  over  again,  and  could  hardly 
think  of  anything  else."  In  other  words,  Burke's 
greatest  speech  has  the  same  merits  as  his  'Let- 
ter to  the  Electors  of  Bristol ' ;  and,  for  all  the 
effect  it  produced,  it  might  as  well  have  been 
printed  with  no  attempt  at  delivery.  And  here 
the  kinship  of  Isocrates  becomes  evident;  how- 
ever superior  the  Irishman  might  be  to  the  Greek 
in  splendor  and  amplitude  and  penetration,  they 
both  of  them  lacked  the  first  requisite  of  the 
orator.  This  condition  precedent  to  triumph 
was  possessed  abundantly  by  Demosthenes  and 
by  Cicero,  by  Bossuet  and  by  Webster — men 
with  whom  it  is  not  unfair  to  compare  Burke. 

It  has  been  possessed  also  by  many  men  of  far 
inferior  powers,  lacking  all  things  that  Burke  had, 
but  having  the  one  quality  Burke  was  without. 
Who  turns  to  Whitefield's  sermons  to-day  for 
counsel  or  for  comfort  ?  But  the  size  of  the 
crowds  that  Whitefield  attracted  to  hear  him 
was  limited  only  by  the  range  of  his  voice.  Who 
cares  nowadays  to  shake  the  dust  from  off  the 
five  volumes  of  Sheridan's  speeches  ("edited  by 
a  constitutional  friend  ")  ?  And  yet  so  potent  was 
Sheridan's  speech  against  Warren  Hastings  on 
the  charge  relative  to  the  Princesses  of  Oudh  that 
an  adjournment  of  the  House  was  moved  on  the 
ground  that  it  had  left  such  an  impression  that 


THE   RELATION   OF   THE   DRAMA   TO   LITERATURE 

no  one  could  arrive  at  a  determinate  opinion; 
while  Pitt  and  Grenville,  after  consultation,  de- 
cided that  Burke's  speech  on  the  Nabob  of  Arcot's 
debts  was  not  worth  answering. 

This  discussion  of  eloquence  may  seem  to 
some  a  digression,  or  at  least  an  excursus;  but 
it  is  justified  by  the  essential  similarity  of  oratory 
and  the  drama,  the  two  oral  arts,  standing  on 
the  same  plane  and  to  be  judged  by  the  same 
standards.  For  example,  the  position  of  Burke 
on  the  platform  is  not  unlike  that  of  Browning 
on  the  stage.  We  may  see  in  Burke  all  the 
qualities  of  a  great  orator;  but  the  fact  remains 
that  those  whom  he  sought  to  influence  by  his 
voice  did  not  listen  to  him  eagerly.  And  we 
may  discover  in  Browning  the  qualities  of  a 
great  dramatist;  but  the  fact  remains  that  his 
plays  were  not  able  to  hold  their  own  in  the 
theater.  And,  in  like  manner,  we  may  parallel 
the  vogue  of  Whitefield  as  a  preacher  with  that 
of  playmakers  like  the  authors  of  the  '  Two 
Orphans'  and  of  the  'Old  Homestead,'  who  are 
ready  to  rest  content  if  they  can  entrance  the 
playgoer,  and  who  have  no  hope  of  attracting 
the  attention  of  the  reader. 

It  is  possible  to  discover  in  more  than  one 
dramatist  of  high  rank  the  same  feeling  of  dis- 
trust for  a  play  that  reads  well  which  Fox  so 
frankly  expressed  for  a  speech  that  reads  well; 

227 


THE   RELATION   OF  THE   DRAMA   TO   LITERATURE 

and  it  is  easy  to  adduce  instances  where  the 
dramatist,  having  won  the  kind  of  success  he 
sought,  has  been  satisfied  with  that,  shrinking 
from  a  publication  of  his  plays  which  would 
permit  them  to  be  tried  by  purely  literary  tests. 
John  Marston,  in  the  preface  to  his  'Malcontent,' 
—  which  he  printed  only  because  a  pirate  had 
already  sent  forth  an  unauthorized  text, — asserts 
that  "only  one  thing  affects  me,  to  think  that 
scenes  invented  merely  to  be  spoken  should  be 
inforcively  published  to  be  read." 

For  the  same  reason,  Moliere  was  compelled 
to  publish  the  '  Precieuses  Ridicules.'  He  also 
wrote  a  preface,  beginning  it  by  saying  that  it  is 
a  strange  thing  for  people  to  be  printed  against 
their  wills.  He  does  not  affect  to  despise  his 
comedy,  for  in  these  matters  the  public  is  the 
absolute  judge;  and  even  if  he  had  had  the  worst 
possible  opinion  of  his  play  before  the  perform- 
ance, he  ought  now  to  believe  that  it  is  good  for 
something,  since  so  many  people  together  have 
praised  it.  "But,"  he  says, — and  here  is  the 
pertinent  passage, —  "but  as  a  large  part  of  the 
beauties  which  had  been  found  in  it  depend  on 
the  gesture  and  on  the  tone  of  the  voice,  I  thought 
It  advisable  that  it  should  not  be  deprived  of  these 
ornaments;  and  I  found  the  success  which  the 
play  had  had  in  the  performance  so  great  that  I 
might  leave  it  there. "     Thus  we  see  that  Moliere, 

228 


THE    RELATION    OF   THE    DRAMA    TO    LITERATURE 

having  composed  at  the  same  time  the  words  ©f 
his  piece  and  the  stage-business  that  set  off  and 
sustained  the  words,  was  wholly  unwilling  to 
present  to  the  reading  public  his  mere  dialogue 
stripped  naked.  M.  Coquelin,  in  his  striking 
paper  on  Moliere  and  Shakspere,  has  remarked 
that  each  of  these  great  dramatists  had  thrown 
his  plays  alive  on  the  stage,  and  did  not  recog- 
nize them  on  paper.  For  the  authors,  '  Tartuffe ' 
and  '  Hamlet '  existed  "  only  before  the  footlights. 
It  was  only  there  that  they  felt  their  plays  bone  of 
their  bone  and  flesh  of  their  flesh. "  Both  Shakspere 
and  Moliere  were  accomplished  men  of  letters; 
and  both  of  them  were  also  incomparable  mas- 
ters of  the  dramaturgic  art;  therefore  nobody 
knew  better  than  they  how  much  of  its  most 
valuable  quality  a  play  must  inevitably  lose  in  its 
transferal  from  the  boards  of  the  stage  to  the 
shelves  of  the  library. 

All  the  great  dramatic  critics  have  understood 
this;  and  they  have  tried  steadily  to  cultivate  the 
"imaginative  sympathy"  needful  to  enable  them 
to  see  a  play  as  it  might  appear  on  the  stage,  and 
to  seek  always  under  the  flowing  words  for  the 
1  solid  framework  of  the  acted  drama.  But  the 
merely  literary  critics  are  rarely  able  to  look  for 
other  than  merely  literary  qualities.  Even  Charles 
Lamb,  with  all  his  liking  for  the  theater,  collected 
specimens  of  the  Elizabethan  dramatists  which 

229 


THE   RELATION   OF  THE   DRAMA   TO   LITERATURE 

revealed  them  abundantly  as  poets  and  only 
casually  as  playwrights.  The  application  of 
Lamb's  method  to  the  greatest  of  all  the  Eliza- 
bethan dramatists  might  have  preserved  for  us 
more  or  less  of  the  familiar  quotations  in  Bartlett : 
but  it  v^ould  never  have  suggested  the  possibility 
of  a  volume  like  the  'Tales  from  Shakspere.' 

The  true  dramatic  critic  has  discovered  that 
the  dramaturgic  qualities  are  as  special  as  the 
pictorial  or  the  plastic,  and  that,  therefore,  there 
is  almost  as  much  unfairness  in  judging  a  play 
by  the  sole  test  of  literature  as  in  so  judging  a 
picture  or  a  statue.  Indeed,  to  measure  a  drama 
by  literature  alone  is  like  trying  to  criticize  a 
painting  by  a  photograph  alone;  and  it  is  not  the 
best  painting  that  is  most  completely  represented 
by  the  camera. 

M.  Ferdinand  Brunetiere,  tracing  the  epochs  of 
the  French  theater,  asserts  unhesitatingly  that  a 
play  is  under  no  obligation  to  be  literary.  "  The 
drama,"  he  declares,  "can,  if  need  be,  live  on  its 
own  stock,  on  its  own  resources,  relying  solely 
on  its  own  means  of  expression."  He  explains 
that  while  the  epic,  for  example,  and  the  ode 
must  be  literary,  as  a  condition  of  their  existence, 
a  comedy  has  no  more  call  to  be  literary  than  a 
sermon.  This  bold  opinion  of  M.  Brunetiere's  is 
only  an  enlargement  of  an  opinion  of  Aristotle's. 
To   quote  from    Professor   Butcher's   admirable 

230 


THE   RELATION   OF  THE   DRAMA   TO   LITERATURE 

translation:  "If  you  string  together  a  set  of 
speeches  expressive  of  character,  and  well  finished 
in  point  of  diction  and  thought,  you  will  not  pro- 
duce the  essential  tragic  effect  nearly  so  well  as 
with  a  play,  which,  however  deficient  in  these 
respects,  yet  has  a  plot  and  artistically  constructed 
incidents." 

Thus  we  see  that  while  literature  may  deal 
with  words  alone,  while  it  may  be  a  matter  of 
delicate  verbal  adjustment  only,  the  drama  can 
get  along  without  this  refinement.  The  literary 
merit  of  a  play  is  in  what  the  characters  say;  for 
that  is  all  that  is  spelled  out  in  letters.  The  dra- 
matic merit  must  be  sought  beneath  the  surface : 
it  is  to  be  found  in  what  the  characters  do,  in 
what  they  feel,  and  in  what  they  are.  "  Hence 
the  incidents  and  the  plot  are  the  end  of  tragedy; 
and  the  end  is  the  chief  thing  of  all,"  said  Aris- 
totle. And  again:  "Tragedy  is  the  imitation 
of  an  action,  and  of  the  agents,  mainly  with  a 
view  to  the  action." 

After  these  quotations  from  two  dramatic  critics, 
let  me  quote  also  from  two  dramatic  authors. 
The  first  is  from  the  '  Souvenirs '  of  M.  Legouve, 
perhaps  best  known  to  American  theater-goers 
as  the  collaborator  of  Scribe  in  the  authorship  of 
'Adrienne  Lecouvreur.'  M.  Legouve  tells  us 
that  "the  talent  of  the  dramatist  is  a  very  singu- 
lar and  very  special  quality.     It  is  not  necessarily 

231 


THE   RELATION   OF   THE   DRAMA   TO   LITERATURE 

united  to  any  other  intellectual  faculty.  A  man 
may  have  much  wit,  much  learning,  much  literary 
skill,  and  yet  be  absolutely  incapable  of  writing 
a  play.  I  have  seen  men  of  real  value  and  of 
high  literary  culture  bring  me  dramas  and  come- 
dies which  seemed  to  be  the  work  of  a  child. 
On  the  other  hand,  I  have  received  from  persons 
of  no  great  intelligence  plays  in  which  was  to  be 
found  a  something  nothing  else  can  take  the 
place  of,  a  something  which  cannot  be  acquired, 
which  is  never  lost,  and  which  constitutes  the 
dramatist." 

And  the  second  quotation  is  from  the  younger 
Dumas,  from  the  illuminative  preface  which  he 
prefixed  to  his  '  Pere  Prodigue.'  After  asserting 
that  the  real  dramatist  is  born,  not  made,  Dumas 
declares  that  dramatic  effect  is  sometimes  so  in- 
tangible that  the  spectator  cannot  find  in  the 
printed  text  of  a  play  the  point  which  charmed 
him  in  its  performance  and  which  was  due  per- 
haps to  "a  word,  a  look,  a  gesture,  a  silence,  a 
purely  atmospheric  combination."  And  then  he 
goes  on  to  say  that  "a.  man  of  no  value  as  a 
thinker,  as  a  moralist,  as  a  philosopher,  as  a 
writer,  may  be  a  man  of  the  first  order  as  a  dra- 
matic author";  and,  "on  the  other  hand,  for  a 
thinker,  a  writer,  a  philosopher,  to  be  listened  to 
upon  the  stage,  he  must  indispensably  be  pro- 
vided with  the  special  qualities  of  the  man  who 

232 


THE   RELATION   OF   THE   DRAMA   TO   LITERATURE 

has  no  other  value.     In  short,  to  be  a  master  in 
this  art,  one  must  also  be  skilled  in  this  craft." 

The  history  of  the  drama  has  a  long  list  of 
more  or  less  forgotten  playwrights,  skilled  in  the 
craft  of  the  theater,  cunning  in  stage-effect,  and 
owning  no  other  superiority.  But  this  drama- 
turgic faculty,  which  they  had  as  a  sole  posses- 
sion, was  also  the  gift  of  all  the  great  dramatists, 
who  had  this  in  addition  to  their  poetry,  their 
philosophy,  their  psychology.  Not  intricate  plot 
of  Scribe's  is  more  adroitly  contrived  than  the 
'CEdipus'  of  Sophocles;  and  no  melodrama  of 
Kotzebue's  is  more  artfully  constructed  than  the 
'Othello'  of'  Shakspere.  Vision  and  insight 
Sophocles  and  Shakspere  had,  as  well  as  subtlety 
and  power  —  things  unsuspected  by  the  writers 
of  the  'Ladies'  Battle'  and  of  the  'Stranger.' 
But  the  greatness  of  Shakspere  and  Sophocles 
as  dramatists  was  due,  first  of  all,  to  that  same 
gift  of  play-making  which  was  the  whole  of 
Scribe's  possession  and  the  whole  of  Kotzebue's. 

It  matters  not  how  beautiful  a  building  may  be, 
if  its  structure  is  feeble  and  faulty;  for  then  it 
can  be  neither  useful  nor  durable.  Strength  must 
precede  grace;  and  the  dramatic  poet  must  begin 
by  being  a  practical  playwright,  just  as  an  archi- 
tect must  master  construction.  Whenever  a  poet 
denies  this  obligation,  and  shrinks  from  due  ap- 
prenticeship to  stagecraft,  he  surrenders  his  chance 

233 


THE   RELATION    OF   THE    DRAMA   TO    LITERATURE 

of  being  a  dramatist.  The  stage  of  their  own 
times  is  the  platform  upon  which  the  real  drama- 
tists have  always  found  themselves  at  home. 
Euripides,  Lope  de  Vega,  and  Corneille  did  not 
retire  into  an  ivory  tower:  they  brought  out 
plays  to  please  the  broad  public.  There  is  no 
more  patent  absurdity  than  the  play  that  is  not 
intended  to  be  played  —  the  closet-drama,  as  it  is 
called. 

This  unactable  drama  of  lofty  poetic  pretense 
is  largely  a  development  of  our  own  day,  although 
it  may  find  a  doubtful  ancestor  in  the  tragedy  of 
Seneca.  The  Latin  phrasemonger  did  not  in- 
tend his  pieces  to  be  performed;  and  this  is  for- 
tunate for  him,  as  the  fate  is  not  doubtful  of 
plays  in  which  the  deed  is  forever  sacrificed  to 
the  word,  and  in  which  the  heartfelt  cry  is  sup- 
pressed in  favor  of  the  elaborated  antithesis. 
Whether  Browning  and  Tennyson  and  Swin- 
burne had  it  in  them  to  be  dramatists,  nobody 
knows;  but  nobody  can  deny  that  they  are  not 
dramatists  as  were  Calderon  and  Schiller,  as  are 
Ibsen  and  Sudermann.  However  various  their 
qualifications,  they  fail  to  reveal  the  most  impor- 
tant of  all  —  the  possession  of  sufficient  stagecraft 
to  make  the  performance  of  their  plays  profitable. 

It  is  in  this  ability  to  hold  the  attention  of  an 
average  audience  of  their  own  contemporaries 
that  the  inspired  dramatists  stand  side  by  side 

234 


THE   RELATION   OF   THE   DRAMA   TO   LITERATURE 

with  the  uninspired  play-makers.  Poets  they 
are,  but  first  of  all  theater-poets,  in  the  apt 
German  phrase.  Even  to-day,  despite  the  gulf 
of  two  thousand  years  that  yawns  between  us 
and  the  civilization  of  Greece,  we  are  gripped  by 
the  inexorable  action  as  the  awful  fate  of  CEdipus 
is  unrolled  before  us  in  the  playhouse,  and  we 
are  dissolved  in  pity.  And  as  for  the  sad  story 
of 'Hamlet,'  were  that  performed  in  an  asylum  for 
the  deaf-and-dumb,  there  would  be  no  fear  that 
the  interest  of  the  spectators  would  flag.  There 
is  that  in  'Hamlet'  which  the  deaf  would  fail  to 
get;  and  no  doubt  this  is  what  gives  the  play  its 
significance;  but  what  they  could  take  in  by  the 
eye  alone  would  reward  them  amply  for  the  effort. 
By  whom  was  it  first  said  that  the  skeleton  of  a 
good  play  was  always  a  pantomime  ?  And  who- 
ever has  had  the  pleasure  of  seeing  the  'Enfant 
Prodigue '  has  had  proof  positive  that  the  drama 
can  exist  without  even  the  elements  of  literature ; 
for  here  was  a  play  that  made  us  laugh  and  made 
us  cry,  with  never  a  word  spoken. 

The  dramatists  themselves  have  never  had  any 
doubts  as  to  the  relative  importance  of  the  the- 
atrical and  the  literary  elements  in  a  play.  To 
them  the  skeleton  of  action  is  everything;  and 
nothing  the  verbal  epidermis.  In  the  preface  to 
the  'Marriage  of  Figaro,'  Beaumarchais  assures 
us  that  when  he  had  mastered  the  subject  of  a 

2)5 


THE   RELATION   OF   THE   DRAMA   TO   LITERATURE 

play  he  saw  the  characters  before  him.  "What 
they  will  say,  I  don't  know:  it  is  what  they  are 
going  to  do  that  interests  me."  And  Racine  is 
recorded  to  have  told  a  friend  that  a  new  tragedy 
of  his  was  nearly  completed  —  as  he  had  only  to 
write  it.  Here,  in  Beaumarchais  and  in  Racine, 
we  see  an  incipient  contempt  for  mere  writing 
that  came  to  a  head  in  the  advertisement  of  a 
New  York  theater  a  few  years  ago,  wherein  it 
was  proclaimed,  as  one  of  the  elements  of  attrac- 
tion of  a  certain  more  or  less  comic  play,  that  it 
was  without  "literary  merit." 

A  rough-and-tumble  farce,  hastily  knocked  to- 
gether by  a  variety-show  performer,  to  satirize 
rudely  some  folly  of  the  moment,  is  of  more  im- 
portance in  the  actual  development  of  the  drama 
than  can  be  any  string  of  soliloquies  and  dialogues, 
however  poetic  or  polished  these  may  be.  The 
farce  that  pleases  the  people  has  in  it  the  root  of 
the  matter:  here  is  the  germ  of  the  real  thing; 
while  the  drama  for  the  closet  lingers  lifeless 
and  inert  on  the  shelves  of  the  library.  The  in- 
fluence of  the  unpretending  popular  play  —  the 
folk-theater,  as  one  might  call  it  —  is  far  deeper 
and  wider  than  most  historians  of  literature  have 
perceived.  The  beginnings  of  Moliere's  comedy 
must  be  sought  in  the  French  farces  and  in  the 
Italian  improvisations  of  his  boyhood;  and  no 
one  has  yet  worked  out  the  exact  indebtedness 

236 


THE   RELATION   OF   THE   DRAMA   TO   LITERATURE 

of  Victor  Hugo  and  the  elder  Dumas  to  Pixere- 
court  and  Ducange  and  the  other  melodramatists 
of  the  boulevard  theaters,  whose  labors  made 
the  path  straight  for  the  Romanticists. 

The  reason  why  this  folk-theater  was  so  soon 
forgotten  is  simply  because  it  lacked  literature. 
Its  merits  were  not  only  chiefly  theatrical;  they 
were  wholly  theatrical.  These  plays  were  act- 
able, but  they  were  not  readable;  and  when  they 
ceased  to  be  acted,  they  disappeared  into  dark- 
ness. The  instant  that  they  were  crowded  off 
the  stage,  they  fell  sheer  into  oblivion.  The  suc- 
cess of  a  play,  be  it  tragedy  or  comedy,  depends 
upon  its  fitness  for  the  playhouse  and  for  the 
players  of  its  own  time;  but  the  survival  of  a 
play  depends  on  its  literary  quality.  Only  litera- 
ture is  permanent.  As  the  younger  Dumas  goes 
on  to  say,  in  the  preface  from  which  I  have 
already  quoted,  "a  dramatic  work  should  always 
be  written  as  though  it  was  only  to  be  read. 
The  performance  is  only  a  reading  aloud  by  sev- 
eral persons  for  the  benefit  of  those  who  will  not 
or  can  not  read.  It  is  through  those  who  go  to 
the  theater  that  the  work  succeeds;  and  it  is  by 
those  who  do  not  go  that  it  subsists.  The  spec- 
tator gives  it  vogue,  and  the  reader  makes  it 
durable." 

Upon  this  side  of  the  discussion  there  is  no 
need  to  dwell.     Nobody  disputes  that  dramatic 

237 


THE   RELATION    OH   THE   DRAMA   TO   LITERATURE 

literature  must  be  literature,  although  there  are 
not  a  few  who  do  not  insist  that  it  must  be  dra- 
matic. The  great  dramatists  have  accepted  the 
double  obligation ;  and  they  have  always  recog- 
nized that  the  stage  of  the  theater,  and  not  the 
desk  of  the  library,  is  the  true  proving-room. 
This  double  obligation  it  is  that  makes  the  drama 
so  difficult  an  art  —  perhaps,  indeed,  the  most 
difficult  of  all  the  arts. 

(1897) 


238 


X 

THE  CONVENTIONS  OF 
THE  DRAMA 


[This  paper  is  based  on  the  notes  of  an  address  delivered  be- 
fore the  Modern  Language  Association,  at  Yale  University,  in 
December,  1894.] 


THE   CONVENTIONS  OF  THE   DRAMA 

IN  her  frankly  feminine  and  agreeably  Gallic 
'Notes  on  London,'  Mme.  Alphonse  Daudet 
records  her  surprise  at  the  strange  spectacle 
of  old  ladies  going  to  the  Queen's  drawing- 
room  at  Buckingham  Palace  with  bare  arms, 
and  shoulders  uncovered,  and  hair  bediamonded, 
all  in  the  broad  daylight.  In  Paris  personal  dec- 
oration so  sumptuous  is  reserved  for  evening, 
and  for  artificial  illumination.  On  the  other  hand, 
in  England  men  put  on  the  white  tie  and  the 
dress-coat  only  when  twilight  begins;  where- 
as in  France  this  garb  is  primarily  ceremonial, 
and  is  worn  on  .state  occasions,  whatever  the 
hour  of  the  day.  It  was  in  a  dress-coat  and 
with  a  white  tie,  and  bareheaded  under  the 
summer  sun,  that  President  Casimir-Perier  fol- 
lowed the  bier  of  the  murdered  Carnot.  Mme. 
Daudet  also  notes  that  she  kept  to  the  French 
custom,  and  took  off  her  bonnet  when  she  went 
out  to  lunch  in  London,  only  to  discover  that  it 
was  the  English  fashion  for  ladies  to  retain  their 

241 


THE   CONVENTIONS   OF   THE   DRAMA 

head-coverings  at  a  midday  meal  in  a  friend's 
house.  When  the  late  Philip  Gilbert  Hamerton 
brought  his  French  bride  to  visit  his  British 
family,  he  put  her  on  her  guard  on  some  points, 
so  she  relates:  "  I  was  told  not  to  be  always 
thanking  the  servants  for  their  services  (as  we 
do  in  France)  if  I  wished  to  be  considered  well- 
bred." 

Thus  we  see  that  the  social  practices  of  the 
Gaul  and  the  Briton  are  sometimes  sharply  op- 
posed one  to  the  other,  although  the  English 
Channel  is  but  a  narrow  strip  of  water.  When 
we  go  as  far  as  the  Suez  Canal,  we  find  Oriental 
customs  as  arbitrary  as  the  Occidental,  and  abso- 
lutely different  from  them.  In  the  Orient  a  man 
wears  his  hat  in  church  or  in  the  presence  of  his 
superior,  and  he  takes  off  his  shoes.  The  women 
of  the  East  veil  their  faces,  even  though  their 
figures  be  ill  concealed  beneath  a  single  floating 
and  diaphanous  garment;  and  they  are  wont  to 
think  the  worst  of  the  women  of  the  West  who 
clothe  their  bodies  and  reveal  their  visages. 

It  would  be  easy  to  collect  other  contradic- 
tions as  characteristic  as  these;  but  here  are 
quite  enough  to  suggest  that  the  differing  cus- 
toms, although  everywhere  enforced  by  the 
pressure  of  opinion,  are  often  quite  illogical  in 
themselves.  There  is  no  inherent  reason  why  a 
man  should  wear  a  dress-coat  in  the  daytime  or 

242 


THE   CONVENTIONS   OF   THE   DRAMA 

should  not  wear  it;  the  French  decide  the  ques- 
tion in  accordance  with  one  theory  and  the 
British  in  accordance  with  another.  The  decision 
having  been  made,  there  is  in  each  country  an 
unformulated  agreement  as  to  the  proper  course 
on  all  occasions.  These  conventions  of  society 
are  subject  to  constant  change,  but  while  they 
are  in  force  they  are  quite  as  powerful  as  the  un- 
written laws  that  govern  our  political  actions. 
In  public  life,  for  example,  there  is  a  tacit  under- 
standing that  no  President  of  the  United  States 
shall  have  a  third  term  and  that  the  presidential 
electors  shall  not  really  exercise  any  choice  of 
their  own.  Upon  conventions  like  these  the 
whole  structure  of  society  has  been  erected,  and 
life  would  become  immensely  difficult  were  we 
to  begin  suddenly  to  question  the  countless  im- 
plied contracts  to  which  we  submit  ourselves 
unhesitatingly  without  having  given  them  any 
consideration  whatever. 

Language  is  likewise  a  convention,  whether 
spoken  or  written;  and  our  accepted  orthogra- 
phy is  only  a  common  understanding  to  use 
certain  combinations  of  letters  to  represent  the 
several  sounds  of  English  speech.  The  Morse 
alphabet  of  dots  and  lines  is  no  more  a  matter  of 
consensus  than  is  the  use  of  the  Arabic  numerals. 
Every  art  has  its  own  language  and  its  own 
picture-writing.      Implied  contracts,   like  those 

243 


THE  CONVENTIONS   OF   THE   DRAMA 

that  underlie  the  art  of  human  intercourse,  are  at 
the  base  of  all  the  other  fine  arts  also;  and  not  a 
few  of  the  denunciations  of  artistic  conventionali- 
ties we  hear  so  frequently  are  due  to  an  imperfect 
apprehension  of  the  condition  precedent  to  each 
of  the  several  arts;  they  are  the  result  of  a  failure 
to  perceive  the  terms  of  the  tacit  understanding 
between  the  public,  party  of  the  first  part,  and 
the  practitioners  of  the  art  in  question,  parties  of 
the  second  part  —  an  unwritten  treaty  which 
alone  makes  that  art  possible. 

The  infinite  variety  of  nature  can  never  be  re- 
produced by  finite  means;  and  therefore  art 
necessarily  consists  in  the  suppression  of  non- 
essentials— the  decision  as  to  what  is  essential 
changing  with  every  art,  with  every  artist,  and 
with  every  subject.  Life  is  so  varied  and  so  com- 
plex that  the  poet,  the  painter,  and  the  sculptor 
must  each  of  them  select  from  the  multiplicity  of 
details  before  him  those  which  will  best  suggest 
the  whole.  The  movement  of  real  life  is  eternal, 
and  the  play  of  light  and  shade  and  color  is  in- 
cessant; yet  the  sculptor  is  forced  to  accept 
monochrome  and  to  renounce  all  attempt  to 
reproduce  actual  motion;  and  if  he  refuses  to 
subscribe  to  the  convention  which  allows  him 
to  falsify  realities  by  excluding  motion  and  color, 
the  most  he  can  hope  to  achieve  is  some  sort  of 
mechanical  waxworks.       In  like  manner,   the 

344 


THE   CONVENTIONS   OF  THE   DRAMA 

draftsman  in  black-and-white  represents  a  mar- 
ble figure  or  an  ivory  carving  by  tracing  dark 
lines  on  light  paper,  thus  calling  up  before  us 
the  real  truth  by  a  denial  of  the  actual  fact.  The 
screen-scene  of  the  '  School  for  Scandal '  is  seen 
by  us  only  because  in  the  theater  one  side  of 
Joseph  Surface's  library  has  been  removed,  the 
playgoers  knowing  that  in  real  life  most  rooms 
have  four  walls,  but  none  the  less  permitting  the 
playwright  to  eliminate  one  of  the  four,  or  else 
he  could  never  set  before  them  what  was  taking 
place  within  doors. 

The  convention  on  which  sculpture  depends 
is  that  the  statue  of  a  living  man  may  be  color- 
less and  motionless.  The  convention  without 
which  the  art  of  black-and-white  could  not  exist 
is  that  all  the  soft  play  of  shifting  color  which 
perpetually  delights  us  in  nature  shall  be  repre- 
sented by  dark  lines  of  varying  sharpness.  As 
art  cannot  reproduce  nature  as  a  whole,  it  must 
rely  on  the  implied  contract  for  the  right  to  make 
the  suppressions  and  the  modifications  it  thinks 
it  needs.  Some  suppression  and  some  modifica- 
tion is  absolutely  necessary;  but  so  willing  is  the 
public  to  let  the  artist  have  all  the  license  he  re- 
quires that  it  has  often  accorded  privileges  not 
at  all  needful.  For  example,  in  the  processions 
painted  on  the  walls  of  the  Egyptian  temples, 
the  sovran  was  always  depicted  as  of  a  stature 

245 


THE  CONVENTIONS   OF  THE   DRAMA 

considerably  exceeding  that  of  his  warriors. 
This  conventionality,  not  being  essential,  was 
only  temporary.  Certain  other  conventionalities 
are  tolerated  without  objection  even  now,  when 
they  are  imposed  on  the  artist  by  the  material  in 
.  which  he  is  working;  thus,  as  marble  is  fragile, 
the  sculptor  working  in  it  is  allowed  to  stiffen  a 
nude  figure  by  the  wholly  gratuitous  trunk  of  a 
tree  and  sometimes  even  by  a  frankly  unexplained 
support  of  the  stone  itself;  but  this  privilege  is 
properly  denied  to  the  statuary  who  works  in 
bronze. 

In  no  one  of  the  arts  are  there  more  legitimate 
conventions  than  in  the  drama;  in  none  also  are 
there  more  outworn  and  accidental  convention- 
alities. To  study  these  is  to  gain  increased  in- 
sight into  the  methods  of  the  great  dramatists. 
The  artist  is  rarely  a  theorist  also;  and  generally 
he  employs  without  question  the  conventions 
he  finds  in  use  by  the  predecessors  whose  ap- 
prentice he  was.  The  essential  conventions  un- 
derlying the  drama  are  permanent,  like  those 
supporting  each  of  the  other  arts;  and  the  play- 
goer is  so  accustomed  to  these  that  he  takes 
them  for  granted  and  never  cavils  at  the  artistic 
deviation  from  complexity  of  real  life.  In  the 
drama,  as  in  the  novel  and  in  narrative  verse, 
the  author  needs  to  disentangle  the  action  he  has 
chosen  to  set  forth  from  out  the  countless  acces- 

[  r 

\ 


THE   CONVENTIONS   OF   THE   DRAMA 

sory  incidents  with  which  it  would  be  inter- 
mingled inextricably  were  it  a  true  story.  He 
needs  to  acquaint  his  auditors  with  that  part  of 
his  plot  which  has  taken  place  before  the  play 
begins.  He  needs  to  present  his  characters 
clearly  and  unhesitatingly,  so  that  the  spectator 
can  follow  them  without  confusion  or  doubt, 
perceiving  at  once  the  motive  for  their  respective 
actions.  He  needs  to  remember  always  that  his 
minutes  are  few  and  that  he  has  none  to  spare, 
so  that  he  must  pick  his  words  and  compact  his 
dialogue,  presenting  in  a  quarter  of  an  hour  a 
discussion  that  in  reality  might  have  been  pro- 
tracted through  half  a  day  or  half  a  year. 

These  are  among  the  permanent  and  essential 
conventions,  as  necessary  in  Athens  of  old  as  in 
New  York  now.  And  by  the  side  of  these  the 
student  of  stage-history  can  draw  up  a  list  of 
temporary  conventionalities,  acceptable  some- 
where for  a  season,  but  seeming  very  absurd 
where  they  are  not  in  fashion.  In  the  Japanese 
theater  the  gorgeously  costumed  characters  are 
accompanied  each  by  an  attendant  in  somber 
black,  who  is  supposed  to  be  invisible,  and  whose 
duty  it  is  to  hold  his  master's  fan  or  sword  and 
to  act  as  his  body-servant.  In  the  Chinese  thea- 
ter in  New  York,  half  a  dozen  chairs  piled  on  the 
top  of  a  couple  of  tables  serve  to  suggest  a  moun- 
tain covered  with  ice  and  snow.     In  the  passion- 

247 


THE   CONVENTIONS   OF   THE   DRAMA 

play,  which  still  survives  in  New  Mexico,  almost 
four  centuries  after  the  Spanish  brought  it  across 
the  Atlantic,  the  Devil  is  now  represented  always 
in  the  uniform  of  a  United  States  cavalry  officer; 
and  when  Captain  Bourke  once  proffered  an  in- 
fantry uniform  instead,  it  was  declined.  In  the 
Greek  theater  two  thousand  years  ago,  when  a 
murder  had  been  committed  behind  closed  doors, 
the  portals  were  opened  from  within,  and  there 
was  thrust  forward  the  ehhyklema,  a  platform  on 
rollers,  on  which  was  a  group  —  a  tableau  vivant, 
as  it  were  —  posed  to  represent  the  deed  of  death 
just  committed  out  of  sight. 

Now,  each  of  these  spectacles  seems  to  us  un- 
natural and  ridiculous;  but  no  one  of  them  so 
impressed  the  spectators  before  whom  it  was 
produced.  Because  they  were  accustomed  to  it 
and  knew  nothing  else,  it  seemed  to  them  per- 
fectly natural.  And  this  is  not  merely  because 
they  were  barbarians  or  Greeks,  since  we  New- 
Yorkers  of  the  nineteenth  century  now  accept  as 
normal  conventionalities  which  would  strike  a 
Chinaman  or  a  Mexican,  a  Japanese  or  an  Athe- 
nian, as  inexpressibly  ludicrous.  Is  the  invisble 
attendant  in  black  much  more  impossible  than 
our  stage  waiting-maid,  with  her  silk  stockings, 
short  skirts,  beribboned  cap,  and  bejeweled  ears  } 
Is  the  frozen  peak  made  of  obvious  chairs  and 
tables  much  more  impossible  than  the  sudden 

248 


THE   CONVENTIONS   OF   THE   DRAMA 

lowering  from  the  sky  of  a  drop-scene  on  which 
is  painted  a  street  of  solidly  built  stone  houses  ? 
Is  the  ehkyklema  much  more  impossible  than  our 
equivalent  device  of  a  wall  made  of  wire-gauze 
and  becoming  unexpectedly  transparent  when 
the  lights  are  lowered  in  front  of  it  and  turned 
up  behind  ? 

If  we  take  time  to  think,  we  can  see  that  these 
things  are  out  of  nature;  but  we  are  so  accus- 
tomed to  them  that  we  accept  them  as  a  matter 
of  course.  So  in  other  countries  and  at  other 
times  other  conventionalities  have  passed  unper- 
ceived,  however  abnormal  and  freakish  they  may 
seem  now  to  us.  The  Greeks  saw  nothing  out 
of  the  way  in  a  tragic  hero  raised  up  on  tall 
buskins  and  speaking  through  the  mouth  of  a 
mask,  which  had  to  retain  its  set  expression 
throughout  the  play,  however  startling  the  un- 
expected turns  of  the  plot.  The  Latins  found 
pleasure  in  a  lyric  monologue  (called  cantica) 
chanted  by  a  singer  in  a  corner  of  the  stage, 
while  the  actor  in  the  center  made  the  appropri- 
ate gestures;  and  this  has  a  modern  parallel  in 
our  unsuspicious  enjoyment  of  the  orchestral 
accompaniment  of  a  song  supposed  to  be  sung 
under  circumstances  where  no  orchestra  could 
possibly  be  present  —  in  the  Forest  of  Arden,  for 
instance.  The  English  under  Elizabeth  expected 
to  be  forewarned  of  the  exit  of  an  important 

249 


THE   CONVENTIONS   OF   THE   DRAMA 

character  by  a  riming  couplet  at  the  end  of  his 
speech,  that  they  might  be  ready  with  their  ap- 
plause. The  French  under  Louis  XIV  were  not 
shocked  by  the  presence  of  rows  of  courtiers 
seated  down  each  side  of  the  stage  and  leaving 
only  a  contracted  space  in  the  center  for  the 
characters  of  the  comedy  to  transact  their  most 
private  affairs. 

As  we  read  down  the  history  of  the  drama  we 
discover  that  almost  every  generation  has  prided 
itself  on  getting  closer  to  nature  than  its  prede- 
cessor did ;  but  an  analysis  of  this  boasted  prog- 
ress shows  us  that  it  has  consisted  generally  in 
the  discarding  of  some  of  the  more  flagrant  con- 
ventionalities of  the  earlier  generation  —  for  which 
others  quite  as  arbitrary  were  often  substituted 
promptly,  A  conventionality  which  had  its 
origin  in  some  circumstance  of  a  single  theater  is 
transplanted  to  other  theaters  where  it  is  quite 
meaningless;  and  there  it  lingers  long,  for  the 
stage  is  the  most  conservative  of  all  human  in- 
stitutions, very  loath  to  give  up  anything  which 
has  once  pleased  the  public.  The  Theater  of 
Dionysus  at  Athens  was  the  model  of  the  Greek 
theaters  elsewhere;  and  as  it  was  so  situated  that 
the  city  was  west  of  its  stage  and  the  open 
country  east,  a  habit  sprang  up  for  a  character 
to  enter  by  the  western  entrance  if  he  was  a 
resident  of  the  place  where  the  scene  was  laid 

250 


THE   CONVENTIONS    OF   THE    DRAMA 

or  if  he  came  from  the  harbor,  and  by  the  eastern 
if  he  was  a  traveler  by  land.  This  Athenian  cus- 
tom spread  to  the  other  Greek  theaters,  where 
it  was  a  pure  conventionality,  not  dependent  on 
the  relative  situation  of  the  city  and  the  theater. 
Nay,  more,  like  so  many  other  traditions  of  the 
Greek  stage,  it  was  carried  over  to  Rome;  and  in 
the  comedies  of  Plautus  we  find  that  personages 
entering  "stage  right"  are  supposed  to  come  from 
the  harbor,  while  those  entering  "  stage  left  "  are 
supposed  to  come  from  the  Forum,  the  former 
being  strangers  and  the  latter  citizens. 

Perhaps  the  fondness  of  certain  actors  to-day 
for  the  center  of  the  stage  is  a  survival  from  the 
time  when  no  other  position  was  adequately 
lighted.  In  the  early  days  of  the  century,  be- 
fore the  introduction  of  gas,  the  footlights  con- 
sisted of  half  a  dozen  or  more  oil  lamps,  and 
the  point  where  their  rays  converged  was  very 
properly  known  as  the  "focus."  Here  all  im- 
portant passages  of  the  piece  had  to  be  delivered, 
since  elsewhere  the  accompanying  play  of  feature 
was  not  assuredly  visible.  It  is  told  that  when 
one  of  Kean's  admirers  complimented  him  at 
supper  after  a  performance  of  'Othello,'  saying 
that  in  the  great  scene  with  lago  he  almost 
thought  the  tragedian  would  strangle  the  villain, 
Kean  answered,  "Confound  the  fellow!  He 
•was  trying  to  get  me  out  of  the  focus! "     Under 

251 


THE   CONVENTIONS   OF  THE   DRAMA 

the  electric  light  the  face  of  the  actor  can  now  be 
seen  clearly  in  the  most  remote  corner  of  the  stage. 

Other  conventionalities  have  been  abandoned 
as  the  modern  stage  has  become  more  realistic. 
In  the  last  century  the  "box-set"  had  not  been 
devised,  which  frames  in  a  room  with  walls  and 
a  ceiling.  A  baronial  hall  was  then  indicated  by 
side  scenes  placed  one  behind  the  other,  the  char- 
acters appearing  on  the  stage  through  the  "first 
entrance  right "  or  the  ' '  second  entrance  left,"  after 
apparently  walking  right  through  the  walls  of 
the  house.  The  spectators  never  cried  out  against 
this  impossibility  as  we  should  nowadays,  be- 
cause they  then  had  never  seen  anything  better. 
So  far  as  we  know,  nobody  ever  commented 
on  the  practice  of  the  elder  Booth  in  '  Richard 
III,'  who,  when  the  time  came  for  him  to  fight 
Richmond,  walked  to  a  side-scene  and  received 
a  sword  from  an  invisible  attendant.  This  frank 
conventionality  is  not  unpleasing;  Richard  was 
there  to  fight,  and  he  did  fight,  and  how  he  got 
his  sword  was  an  inconsiderable  trifle  no  man 
need  note  in  that  moment  of  supreme  effort. 

Junius  Brutus  Booth's  simplicity  here  is  far 
preferable  to  Charles  Kean's  conduct  in  calling 
to  the  actor  who  played  the  Porter  and  who  was 
crossing  the  stage,  at  a  rehearsal  of  'Macbeth,' 
to  answer  the  dread  knocking  at  the  gate. 
"  Don't  hide  that  key  in  your  hand,"  cried  Kean, 

252 


THE   CONVENTIONS   OF   THE   DRAMA 

"as  if  it  were  an  ordinary  key!     Let  everybody 
see  that  it  's  a  key  of  the  period!  " 

No  doubt  Charles  Kean  knev^  the  temper  of 
those  who  came  to  see  him  act  better  than  we 
can  know  it  now;  but  it  would  seem  that  only 
when  Macbeth  and  Lady  Macbeth  were  wretch- 
edly impersonated  could  any  spectator  spare  a 
thought  for  the  material  implement  in  that  hour 
of  awful  suspense.  It  is  a  most  artistic  conven- 
tion which  authorizes  the  stage-manager  to  keep 
all  the  accessories  of  a  climax  as  vague  as  may 
be,  so  that  the  attention  of  the  audience  shall 
never  be  distracted  from  the  points  of  prime  im- 
portance, the  faces  of  the  men  and  women  whose 
souls  are  about  to  be  wrung  with  anguish. 

Whatever  may  be  said  against  the  three  unities, 
the  unity  of  attention  must  ever  be  respected. 
Mr.  Jefferson  has  told  us  how  scrupulous  Burke 
and  Burton  were  not  to  interfere  with  one  an- 
other in  the  scenes  they  had  together,  each  attract- 
ing the  eyes  of  the  audience  in  turn  and  each 
remaining  passive  (or,  at  most,  expectant)  while 
the  other  was  speaking.  In  real  life  both  char- 
acters might  have  been  simultaneously  energetic, 
but  as  the  audience  can  give  heed  to  only  a  sin- 
gle performer  at  a  time,  the  one  comedian  or  the 
other  subordinated  himself  temporarily,  with  the 
result  of  intensifying  the  effect  of  the  acting  of 
both. 

253 


THE   CONVENTIONS   OF   THE   DRAMA 

It  may  even  be  doubted  whether  the  individu- 
alizing of  the  constituent  fractions  of  the  mob  in 
the  Forum  scene  of 'Julius  Caesar'  (as  that  play 
was  presented  by  the  Meiningen  Company)  was 
not  an  artistic  error.  True  it  is  that  no  rabble 
had  ever  before  been  so  well  realized  on  the  stage, 
and  that  if  we  watched  the  many-headed  throng 
while  Mark  Antony  was  making  his  dexterous 
appeal,  we  could  discover  how  this  phrase  or 
that  won  over  the  successive  groups  of  the  popu- 
lace. But  we  could  observe  the  crowd  thus 
closely  only  at  the  cost  of  a  certain  neglect  of 
Mark  Antony  himself,  who  ought  to  center  all 
eyes  at  that  central  instant  of  the  tragedy. 
Splendidly  successful  as  the  Meiningers  were  in 
their  histrionic  exposition  of  the  fickleness  of  a 
crowd,  their  performance  explained  the  long  sur- 
vival of  the  ordinary  stage-mob,  a  mere  operatic 
chorus,  almost  automatic,  moved  always  as  one 
man,  and  always  leaving  our  attention  free  to  fol- 
low the  plea  of  the  protagonist.  This  traditional 
crowd  is  a  simplification  of  the  complexity  of 
actual  existence  —  an  artistic  convention  that  jus- 
tifies itself. 

As  the  spectator  has  but  one  pair  of  eyes  and 
but  one  pair  of  ears,  conflicting  emotions  that 
might  be  expressed  simultaneously  in  real  life 
must  on  the  stage  be  expressed  consecutively. 
Only  one  actor  must  act  at  once,  the  others  bid- 

254 


THE   CONVENTIONS   OF   THE   DRAMA 

ing  their  time.  Since  —  in  the  final  analysis  — 
what  we  seek  in  the  theater  is  acting,  everything 
else  must  be  kept  subordinate  to  the  actor,  sup- 
pressing itself  so  that  attention  may  be  concen- 
trated on  him.  To  lay  undue  stress  on  the 
accessories  of  acting  —  on  costume,  for  instance, 
and  on  scenery  —  is  to  divert  the  mind  of  the 
playgoer  from  what  ought  to  be  our  chief  source 
of  pleasure  in  the  theater.  In  his  Shaksperian 
productions  Charles  Kean  took  an  infinity  of 
pains  to  have  every  dress  and  every  background 
and  every  property  historically  accurate  —  an  ac- 
curacy to  which  Shakspere  himself  had  never 
given  a  thought.  The  theater  was  not  built  to 
hold  a  platform  for  illustrated  lectures  on  arche- 
ology and  history:  it  was  meant  to  contain  a 
stage  for  the  depicting  of  human  struggle,  so  that 
the  soul  of  the  spectator  might  be  purged  by 
sympathy  or  lightened  by  laughter. 

It  is  in  matters  of  costume  and  scenery  that 
convention  is  perhaps  most  convenient.  Abso- 
lute accuracy  in  either  is  not  requisite,  even  if 
it  were  possible,  but  only  such  approach  to  the 
actual  fact  as  will  not  distract  attention  by  its 
incongruity.  To-day  we  should  not  be  able  to 
appreciate  Moliere's  acting  as  Caesar  if  we  were 
to  see  him  as  Mignard  has  painted  him  in  the 
part,  with  flowing  periwig  crowned  with  laurel; 
but  under  Louis  XIV  that  was  the  conventional 

255 


THE   CONVENTIONS   OF   THE   DRAMA 

head  of  a  hero,  and  any  closer  reproduction  of 
antiquity  would  have  distracted  the  attention 
of  Moliere's  contemporaries  from  his  perform- 
ance to  the  mere  accident  of  his  make-up.  As 
Macbeth,  Garrick  wore  the  uniform  of  a  British 
major-general  —  perfectly  acceptable  in  his  time, 
when  playgoers  had  not  been  taught  to  think 
about  historic  propriety;  and  in  the  same  part, 
John  Philip  Kemble  used  to  wear  in  his  cap 
towering  black  plumes,  which  Walter  Scott 
once  plucked  out  to  replace  with  the  single 
eagle's  feather  of  a  Highland  chief.  In  Talma's 
time  in  France,  the  play-going  public  was  slowly 
getting  to  have  a  vague  perception  of  the  wide 
gulf  between  the  ancients  and  the  moderns,  and 
yet  when  the  great  French  tragedian  first  entered 
the  green-room  of  the  Theatre  Fran^ais  as  Cinna 
in  what  was  meant  for  a  toga,  one  of  the  actresses, 
shocked  at  this  unexpected  attire,  cried  out  re- 
proachfully :  "  Fi,  Talma,  you  look  like  an  antique 
statue!" 

As  with  costume,  so  with  scenery:  it  best 
serves  its  purpose  when  it  is  least  obtrusive. 
The  most  accomplished  scene-painter  cannot 
give  us  real  sky  on  the  stage,  or  real  daylight, 
real  trees,  or  real  houses.  He  cannot  present 
the  real  thing;  the  best  he  can  do  is  to  represent 
it.  And  as  realism  can  go  only  so  far  and  no 
farther,  it  is  not  a  question  of  principle,  but  a 

256 


THE   CONVENTIONS   OF  THE   DRAMA 

question  of  degree.  All  he  is  called  upon  to  do 
is  to  suggest  these  things  to  us,  and  to  refrain 
from  any  too  flagrant  solecism  which  might  jar 
on  our  nerves  and  prevent  our  giving  our  minds 
unreservedly  to  the  play  itself.  If  he  places  a 
real  tree  amid  the  trees  he  has  painted,  it  looks 
sadly  out  of  place;  and  what  is  worse,  it  also 
recalls  us  from  our  voluntary  illusion  and  reminds 
us  of  the  unreality  of  its  surroundings.  In  the 
nineteenth  century  we  are  so  accustomed  to  the 
elaborately  upholstered  set,  richly  decorated  and 
sumptuously  furnished,  that  we  should  now 
resent  the  simplicity  that  amply  satisfied  our 
ancestors. 

The  Elizabethans  asked  no  questions  as  to 
where  the  scene  of  a  play  was  laid ;  they  saw 
before  them  a  platform  jutting  into  the  yard,  and 
they  gave  their  attention  to  what  the  men  and 
women  did  upon  that  platform.  In  most  of  the 
earlier  Elizabethan  dramas  the  scene  is  laid  on 
the  stage  —  frankly  on  the  stage;  and  whenever 
it  is  necessary  for  the  audience  to  know  just 
what  part  of  the  universe  the  stage  is  then  sup- 
posed to  represent,  this  information  is  promptly 
supplied  by  the  text,  as  in  Marlowe's  '  Doctor 
Faustus,'  for  example.  There  was  no  need  of 
the  alleged  placards  declaring  the  scene;  these 
would  have  been  an  obtrusion  in  the  eyes  of 
Marlowe's    contemporaries,    who    never    cared 

257 


THE   CONVENTIONS   OF  THE   DRAMA 

where  the  place  was,  so  long  as  the  play  was 
interesting.  These  supposed  signs  are  no  more 
than  the  Victorian  explanation  of  a  need  not  felt 
by  the  Elizabethans;  and  they  are  not  warranted 
by  the  passage  of  Sidney  which  is  cited  in  sup- 
port. In  the  Greek  drama,  also,  I  see  no  neces- 
sity whatever  for  any  scenery.  The  Athenians 
were  quite  artistic  enough  in  their  tastes  to  make 
believe  as  much  as  might  be  necessary.  In  the 
*  Frogs  '  of  Aristophanes,  for  example,  the  earlier 
passages  are  on  earth  and  the  later  in  Hades,  but 
I  do  not  believe  that  this  change  of  scene  was 
indicated  by  any  modification  of  the  architectural 
background.  Probably  Bacchus,  on  one  side  of 
the  stage,  stepped  into  a  pasteboard  boat  —  as 
little  deceptive  as  the  basket-horses  of  our  child- 
hood —  and  pretended  to  help  Charon  row  across 
the  Styx;  and  when  they  had  come  to  the  other 
side  of  the  stage,  Bacchus  simply  stepped  out  of 
his  boat,  and  everybody  knew  that  he  had  arrived 
in  Hades.  We  must  not  read  our  modern  de- 
mands into  the  minds  of  the  Greeks.  To  us  a 
device  like  this  might  appear  too  primitive, 
although  in  a  burlesque  —  and  the  'Frogs 'is  a 
burlesque  after  all  —  anything  of  this  sort  would 
be  accepted  as  part  of  the  joke.  But  we  are  look- 
ing back  at  the  simplicity  of  the  Greek  theater 
with  the  consciousness  of  our  own  scenic  elabo- 
ration;  the  Greeks  accepted  it  as  an  immense 

258 


THE   CONVENTIONS   OF   THE   DRAMA 

advance  on  the  still  more  primitive  dance  in  the 
market-place  out  of  which  the  drama  had  been 
developed. 

And  even  now,  when  we  have  been  sated 
with  costumes  and  scenery  and  have  trained 
ourselves  to  be  very  exacting  in  these  accessories, 
we  are  perfectly  willing  to  do  without  them,  if 
only  we  are  warned  beforehand,  so  that  we  are 
not  disappointed  of  any  just  expectation.  Sir 
Henry  Irving  once  took  his  company  to  West 
Point  and  acted  the  'Merchant  of  Venice'  in  the 
mess-hall,  on  a  platform  draped  with  hangings 
only,  without  any  pretense  of  scenery;  and 
never  was  there  a  more  effective  performance,  so 
I  have  been  told  both  by  those  who  beheld  it  and 
by  those  who  took  part  in  it.  Mr.  Edwin  Booth 
once  went  to  the  theater  at  Waterbury  to  act 
'Hamlet,'  only  to  find  that  the  trunks  containing 
the  costumes  had  all  miscarried.  At  his  sugges- 
tion, announcement  was  made  from  the  stage 
that  those  who  wished  their  money  back  might 
have  it,  while  for  those  who  remained  the  tragedy 
would  be  given  in  the  every-day  clothes  of  the 
company.  Here  was  a  more  startling  experi- 
ment than  Sir  Henry  Irving's,  but  it  was  equally 
triumphant,  for  after  the  first  few  minutes  of  sur- 
prise the  spectators  ceased  to  be  conscious  of  the 
clothes  and  gave  their  minds  wholly  to  the  play 
itself.     Thus  we  see  that  even  in  these  sophisti- 

259 


THE   CONVENTIONS   OF   THE   DRAMA 

cated  times,  when  we  are  told  that  Shakspere  is 
possible  on  the  stage  only  when  presented  with 
every  richness  of  scenic  display  and  costly  cos- 
tuming, we  find  that  one  of  his  plays  was  acted 
at  West  Point  with  costumes  but  without  scen- 
ery, and  another  was  acted  at  Waterbury  with 
scenery  but  without  costumes.  In  each  of  these 
cases  the  audience  was  forewarned ;  and  here  we 
have  the  convention  in  its  strictly  etymological 
meaning  of  "agreement."  It  was  a  condition 
precedent  of  their  enjoyment  that  the  spectators 
should  not  notice  the  absence  of  scenery  in  the 
one  case  and  of  costume  in  the  other;  and  the 
audience  had  no  difficulty  in  keeping  its  bargain. 
The  public  never  cavils  at  what  aids  its  own 
amusement,  and  when  it  wants  to  know  what 
has  taken  place  behind  the  scenes,  it  welcomes 
either  the  ekkyklema  of  the  Greeks  or  the  tem- 
porarily transparent  wall  of  Sir  Henry  Irving's 
'Faust,'  freely  permitting  the  dramatist  even  to 
contradict  the  actual  facts,  if  that  will  in  any  way 
help  him  in  his  task.  Indeed,  the  willingness  of 
the  broad  public  to  go  halves  with  the  play- 
wright and  to  make  believe  as  much  as  he  may 
ask  it,  has  always  been  underestimated,  I  think. 
Just  as  the  skilful  etcher  translates  the  light  and 
shade  of  a  human  countenance  by  an  arrange- 
ment of  sharp  black  lines  and  presents  us  with  a 
portrait  we  are  quick  to  call  lifelike,  though  in 

260 


THE   CONVENTIONS   OF   THE   DRAMA 

fact  no  man's  face  is  surrounded  by  a  sharp  black 
line,  so  the  dramatist  is  allowed  not  merely  the 
liberties  he  absolutely  needs,  but  a  few  more,  for 
good  measure.  Some  license  he  must  have, 
since  art  cannot  repeat  or  reproduce  the  whole 
of  life;  and  after  the  permission  is  once  given  to 
vary  from  the  exact  and  complete  fact,  what 
does  it  matter  whether  the  variation  be  more 
or  less  ? 

If  we  give  heed  to  the  conversation  we  hear 
all  about  us  every  day,  we  are  surprised  to  dis- 
cover how  slovenly  it  is,  the  most  of  it  —  how 
involved,  how  full  of  repetitions,  how  studded 
with  broken  phrases  and  with  sentences  that 
begin  anywhere  and  end  nowhere.  Very  rare  is 
the  man  whose  remarks  will  parse  and  whose 
conversation  does  not  abound  in  restatements. 
When  we  write  out  from  memory  the  turns  of  a 
dialogue  in  real  life,  we  recall  and  set  down  only 
the  significant  remarks  and  those  which  led  up 
to  these;  the  insignificant  words,  the  repeti- 
tions, the  digressions,  we  suppress  as  though  we 
had  never  heard  them.  Probably  the  stenogra- 
pher in  a  law-court  is  the  only  reporter  of  human 
speech  who  does  not  cut  out  tautology  and 
straighten  out  grammar.  The  most  prolix  and 
tedious  of  novelists  has  never  dared  to  encumber 
any  chapter  of  his  most  sluggish  story  with  the 
half  of  the  trivial  verbiage  that  would  have  ac- 

261 


THE    CONVENTIONS   OF   THE   DRAMA 

companied  a  siinilnr  discussion  in  real  life.  If 
this  variation  from  nature — the  convention  of 
condensation  —  is  necessary  for  the  novelist 
whose  pages  are  as  many  as  he  shall  please,  it  is 
doubly  imperative  upon  the  playwright,  whose 
minutes  are  counted.  One  reason  why  it  is  dif- 
ficult to  dramatize  a  novel  is  due  to  the  different 
scale  of  condensation  used  in  the  two  arts  —  a 
conversation  that  seemed  easy  and  flowing  in  a 
story  turning  out  to  be  too  loose  in  texture  in 
a  play  and  twice  too  long.  Stage-dialogue,  when 
at  its  best,  when  it  has  most  of  the  directness 
and  simplicity  of  good  talk,  is  very  far  from  the 
laxity  of  every-day  conversation.  In  Augier's 
comedies,  in  Ibsen's  dramas,  we  are  in  a  world 
where  every  character  is  quick  to  seize  the  mean- 
ing of  what  is  said  to  him  and  able  to  express 
his  own  thought  with  the  utmost  brevity  and 
without  any  fumbling  for  the  just  word. 

Having  signed  the  convention  of  condensation 
and  having  accepted  the  play  in  which  no  phrase 
is  wasted  and  no  time  is  lost,  it  is  only  a  slight 
additional  concession  that  Sheridan  and  Beaumar- 
chais  ask  from  us.  In  their  comedies  not  only 
has  every  character  a  mastery  of  terse  speech :  he 
is  also  a  wit.  From  the  picked  and  polished 
sentences  of  Sheridan,  it  is  but  a  short  step  to  the 
rhythmic  prose  that  Shakspere  often  employs; 
and  from  that  to  blank  verse  is  only  a  little  far- 

262 


THE   CONVENTIONS   OF   THE   DRAMA 

ther.  And  if  we  once  agree  to  rhythm,  there  is 
really  no  reason  why  we  should  not  allow  rime 
also.  Shakspere  used  blank  verse  generally,  but 
he  dropped  into  rime  now  and  again,  especially 
in  his  earlier  plays;  Corneille,  Moliere,  and  Racine 
employed  the  riming  couplet.  In  the  Spanish 
drama  asonaiites  were  used  instead  of  ordinary 
rimes,  but  the  metrical  scheme  was  often  elabo- 
rate; and  Lope  de  Vega  especially  recommends 
the  sonnet-form  as  excellent  for  soliloquies.  To 
us  who  speak  English,  sonnet  and  asonante  and 
rimed  couplet  are  alike  unduly  artificial,  while 
blank  verse  and  polished  prose  are  so  familiar 
that  they  seem  natural.  But  the  English  practice 
is  a  matter  of  convention,  just  as  the  Spanish  is 
and  the  French. 

In  Shakspere's  tragedies  we  meet  a  people 
whose  natural  speech  is  blank  verse,  and  in  Mo- 
liere's  comedies  a  people  whose  natural  speech 
is  the  rimed  couplet.  In  French  light  opera  we 
find  characters  whose  ordinary  medium  of  con- 
versation is  compact  prose,  but  who  become 
lyrical  in  moments  of  emotion.  In  Wagner's 
operas  we  are  brought  face  to  face  with  a  tribe 
who  know  no  other  means  of  communicating 
their  thoughts  and  feelings  than  song;  they  are 
not  singing  as  ordinary  mortals  may  do  by  an 
effort  of  the  will  —  they  simply  have  never  sus- 
pected the  existence  of  any  other  form  of  speech. 

263 


THE   CONVENTIONS   OF  THE   DRAMA 

And  just  as  the  convention  underlying  Wagner's 
operas  (without  the  acceptance  of  v/hich  that 
form  of  art  is  impossible)  is  that  of  a  race  ex- 
pressing themselves  naturally  in  song,  so  the 
convention  underlying  pantomime  is  that  of  a 
race  expressing  themselves  naturally  by  gesture. 
The  characters  of  the  '  Enfant  Prodigue, '  for  exam- 
ple, are  not  deaf  and  dumb ;  they  are  not  creatures 
deprived  of  the  ability  to  speak;  they  use  gesture 
freely  and  inevitably  because  they  have  never 
dreamed  that  there  is  any  other  way  to  converse 
than  by  signs.  One  of  these  conventions  may 
be  a  little  closer  to  nature  than  another,  but  all  of 
them  are  sufficiently  removed  from  the  actual 
facts  of  life;  and  although  we  may  not  be  dis- 
posed to  relish  all  of  them  equally,  all  are  alike 
legitimate  in  art. 

Another  essential  convention  permits  all  the 
persons  of  the  drama  to  use  the  same  language 
as  the  audience,  no  matter  what  their  nationality 
may  be.  Not  only  Henry  VIII,  but  Romeo  and 
Juliet,  Hamlet  and  Ophelia,  Brutus  and  Cassius, 
Timon  of  Athens  and  Dromio  of  Syracuse,  all 
speak  English  in  Shakspere's  plays.  In  '  Henry 
V '  the  scenes  in  the  English  camp  are  in  English, 
of  course,  but  so  are  those  at  the  French  court, 
and  even  those  when  the  princes  of  the  rival 
kingdoms  meet  and  confer;  yet  when  Henry  V 
woos  Katharine  she  has  only  broken  French  to 

264 


THE   CONVENTIONS   OF  THE   DRAMA 

answer  his  sturdy  English.  We  see  the  incon- 
sistency here  when  it  is  pointed  out,  but  it  does 
not  annoy  us  in  the  theater.  If  all  the  characters 
did  not  speak  our  own  language  we  should  not 
understand  them.  That  we  should  be  able  to 
follow  the  story  by  taking  in  the  words  spoken 
is  a  condition  precedent  to  our  enjoyment,  so  we 
do  not  deny  the  implied  contract  the  dramatist 
pleads  in  self-defense. 

Shrill  protests  greeted  Signor  Salvini's  first  ap- 
pearance as  Othello  with  a  supporting  company 
of  American  actors;  and  yet  this  novel  arrange- 
ment was  only  a  slight  elaboration  of  the  ordinary 
convention.  When  Mr.  Edwin  Booth  had  acted 
Othello  the  tacit  compact  was  that  all  the  Italians 
of  the  play  should  speak  English;  and  when  he 
acted  lago  to  Signor  Salvini's  Othello  the  implied 
contract  called  for  a  Moor  speaking  Italian  yet 
understanding  English,  and  for  various  Italian 
characters  speaking  English  yet  understanding 
Italian.  When  Mr.  Booth  had  acted  lago  (speak- 
ing English)  with  Herr  Devrient  as  Othello  (speak- 
ing German),  Frau  Methua-Schiller  was  the  Des- 
demona,  and  she  spoke  English  except  when 
addressing  Othello,  and  then  she  spoke  German. 
In  the  Sanskrit  drama  heroes  and  the  nobler  male 
characters  speak  Sanskrit,  while  women  and 
slaves  speak  Pali  —  the  vernacular  of  which  San- 
skrit is  the  more  ceremonial  form.   Oddly  enough, 

265 


THE    CONVENTIONS   OF   THE   DRAMA 

a  similar  distinction  obtains  to-day  in  the  theaters 
of  the  New  York  Ghetto,  where  Mrs.  Van  Rensse- 
laer recently  "saw  an  operetta  in  which  most  of 
the  characters  spoke  or  sang  comprehensible 
German,  while  the  pronouncedly  comic  ones  used 
Yiddish." 

It  is  an  indisputable  necessity  of  the  acted 
drama  that  the  performers  shall  so  pitch  their 
voices  as  to  be  heard  all  over  the  house,  and  that 
they  shall  so  place  themselves  on  the  stage  as  to 
keep  their  faces  visible  from  all  parts  of  the  thea- 
ter. These  are  both  deviations  from  ordinary 
usage,  since  common  sense  tells  us  that  a  man 
does  not  discuss  his  private  affairs  in  tones  to 
be  heard  by  a  thousand  people;  and  the  doctrine 
of  probabilities  assures  us  that  only  a  quarter  of 
the  time  would  a  couple  face  toward  any  given 
point  of  the  compass.  Even  when  two  charac- 
ters alone  on  the  stage  whisper  together  not  to 
be  overheard  by  other  characters  supposed  to  be 
in  the  next  room,  they  can  but  pretend  to  lower 
their  voices,  since  what  they  say  must  be  audible 
to  the  audience  —  or  else  why  say  it.?  Many  a 
critic,  accustomed  to  blank  verse  and  to  the  ab- 
sence of  the  fourth  wall  of  a  room  and  to  a  hun- 
dred other  conventions  he  accepts  blindly,  un- 
conscious that  they  too  are  out  of  nature,  has 
refused  to  legitimate  the  "stage-whisper,"  the 
"aside,"  and  the  "soliloquy,"  holding  them  to 

266 


THE   CONVENTIONS   OF  THE   DRAMA 

be  a  little  too  flagrantly  unreal.  It  is  not  to  be 
denied  that  the  aside  and  the  soliloquy  are  labor- 
saving  devices  which  some  dramatists  have 
worked  hard.  The  easy  convenience  of  soliloquy, 
by  means  of  which  a  tortuous  character  can  un- 
deceive the  audience  while  taking  in  the  other 
personages  of  the  play,  has  been  too  tempting  to 
many  a  playwright.  The  conscientious  dramatist 
has  tended  of  late  to  get  along  without  the  aside 
and  the  soliloquy.  The  younger  Dumas  and 
Ibsen  and  Mr.  William  Gillette  (in  '  Secret  Ser- 
vice ')  have  proved  that  it  is  perfectly  possible  to 
eschew  them  both.  Here  the  laterplaywright  holds 
to  a  higher  standard  of  technic  than  the  earlier, 
just  as  Moliere  made  us  perceive  Tartuffe's  evil 
purpose  without  a  single  self-explanatory  aside, 
while  Shakspere  had  allowed  lago  to  unbosom 
himself  freely  to  the  audience  in  the  intervals  of 
his  hideous  machinations.  After  all,  what  is  the 
convention  underlying  the  soliloquy  ?  It  is  that 
Hamlet,  for  example,  is  a  man  in  the  habit  of  think- 
ing aloud  when  alone.  Few  of  us  would  refuse  to 
sign  this  agreement  at  the  cost  of  losing  '*To  be, 
or  not  to  be."  Few  of  us,  on  the  other  hand,  fail 
to  think  that  the  permission  is  strained  when  we 
find  Romeo  overhearing  Juliet's  soliloquy  on  the 
balcony^  Moliere  took  this  license  as  well  as 
Shakspere,  for  in  the  '  Ecole  des  Femmes '  the 
Notary  overhears  the  soliloquy  of  Arnolphe. 

267 


THE   CONVENTIONS   OF   THE   DRAMA 

The  more  we  examine  the  history  of  the  acting 
drama  the  more  clearly  we  see  that  convention  is 
only  a  question  of  more  or  less,  since  more  or  less 
convention  is  inevitable  in  the  drama  as  in  every 
other  art.  Some  conventions  are  essential  and  per- 
manent, as  we  have  noted  in  the  preceding  pages ; 
and  some  are  accidental  and  temporary.  Of  these 
last  —  which  had  perhaps  best  be  called  conven- 
tionalities—  a  few  are  due  to  the  physical  condi- 
tion of  the  theaters  where  they  arose,  while  others 
have  come  into  being  for  reasons  not  alv^ays 
conjecturable  now.  While  the  temporary  con- 
ventionality is  acceptable,  no  one  remarks  its  ab- 
surdity, which  is  obvious  to  every  one  so  soon 
as  it  falls  out  of  fashion.  The  conventionalities  of 
one  epoch  often  strike  the  people  of  other  epochs 
as  grotesque;  and  the  wonder  is  how  anything 
so  gross  could  ever  have  been  tolerated. 

Although  every  convention  makes  art  remoter 
from  nature,  what  of  it.?  Nature  is  not  art: 
indeed,  if  it  were,  art  would  have  no  excuse  for 
existence.  What  art  does  is  to  give  us  a  skil- 
fully chosen  part  so  arranged  as  to  suggest  the 
whole.  No  one  who  enters  a  theater  really  ex- 
pects or  desires  to  be  shown  an  exact  presenta- 
tion of  life;  and  the  spectators  are  ready,  therefore, 
to  enjoy  the  artistically  modified  representation 
of  life.  Essential  truth  is  what  the  drama  can 
offer  us,  and  not  a  collection  of  the  mere  facts. 

268 


THE  CONVENTIONS   OF  THE   DRAMA 

Professor  William  James,  after  reminding  us 
how  a  poor  child  will  make  a  doll  of  a  rag 
bundle  having  only  the  vaguest  likeness  to  hu- 
manity, remarks  "that  a  thing  not  too  interest- 
ing by  its  own  real  qualities  generally  does  best 
service  here."  Playgoers  are  as  willing  as  little 
children  to  make  believe.  Experience  proves 
that  a  too  close  imitation  of  the  external  facts  of 
real  life  tends  to  check  this  willingness.  "Real 
tubs"  lead  straight  to  the  "tank  drama."  The 
stage  is  the  realm  of  unreality,  and  a  real  tree  is 
not  as  natural  as  a  scene-painter's  tree.  A  true 
sense  of  artistic  fitness  prescribes  that  the  real 
and  the  imitation  shall  not  be  mingled  incongru- 
ously; the  picture  should  be  all  of  a  piece  and 
not  a  thing  of  shreds  and  patches. 

Once  upon  a  time  a  little  girl  had  amused  her- 
self by  dramatizing  a  horse  outof  a  sofa-cushion; 
and  at  last  she  came  to  her  mother  and  said, 
"  Horsey  thirsty."  The  kind  parent  went  to  the 
sideboard  and  poured  out  a  glass  of  water  for 
the  imaginary  steed.  But  this  the  child  rejected 
at  once  with  a  finer  sense  of  dramatic  propriety, 
explaining  that  a  "  purtending  horse  ought  to 
drink  purtending  water." 

(1894-97) 


269 


XI 

A  CRITIC  OF  THE  ACTED  DRAMA 
WILLIAM  ARCHER 


f 


A  CRITIC  OF  THE   ACTED  DRAMA: 
WILLIAM   ARCHER 

OF  a  truth,"  said  Gil  Bias,  "if  indeed  there 
are  bad  authors,  it  must  be  confessed  that 
there  are  still  more  bad  critics."  And  the  reverse 
of  this  is  as  true:  if  there  are  few  good  authors, 
there  are  still  fewer  good  critics.  A  single  glance 
at  any  list  of  the  Hundred  Best  Books  will  show 
that  the  great  critics  are  far  fewer  than  the  great 
poets  or  the  great  orators,  the  great  dramatists  or 
the  great  novelists.  The  reason  is  not  far  to 
seek:  in  criticism  the  gift  of  nature  is  not  all- 
sufficient,  as  so  often  it  is  in  poetry  and  in  fiction. 
There  are  poets  who  have  little  besides  their  lyric 
gift;  and  there  are  novelists  who  have  only  their 
gift  of  story-telling.  What  the  critic  must  have 
is  the  gift  of  insight:  but  he  needs  also  an  equip- 
ment not  to  be  acquired  without  arduous  labor; 
and  he  must  add,  furthermore,  two  precious 
possessions — sympathy  and  disinterestedness. 
These  I  believe  to  be  the  four  qualifications  with- 
out which  preeminence  as  a  critic  is  impossible 

273 


■•^.^a'^-*^-J,t,r--. 


A    CRITIC   OF    THE   ACTED   DRAMA:     WILLIAM   ARCHER 

—insight  and  equipment,  sympathy  and  disin- 
terestedness. Macaulay  was  not  disinterested, 
and  Carlyle  lacked  sympathy;  and  these  deficien- 
cies are  reasons  why  neither  Macaulay  nor  Carlyle 
is  to  be  numbered  among  the  great  critics.  In 
so  far  as  Matthew  Arnold  falls  below  the  highest 
standard,  this  lapse  is  due  chiefly  to  his  some- 
what inadequate  equipment:  he  had  read  the  best 
books  only;  and  he  had  not  a  scholar's  mastery 
of  all  the  books  good,  bad,  and  worse  in  any 
single  division  of  knowledge.  Of  course  the 
prime  requisite  is  the  critical  faculty  itself;  and 
this  is  no  common  having:  but  it  is  of  little  avail 
if  its  possessor  has  not  also  a  memory  well 
stored,  a  mind  unbiased,  and  a  heart  open  to 
new  forms  of  truth. 

Rare  as  the  purely  literary  critic  may  be,  the 
critic  of  the  acted  drama  cannot  but  be  rarer  yet, 
since  his  task  is  far  more  difficult.  The  former 
needs  to  know  the  theory  and  the  practice  of  but 
a  single  art,  the  art  of  the  writer;  while  the  latter 
has  to  be  possessed  of  the  principles  not  only  of 
that  art,  but  also  of  two  others  wholly  different, 
the  art  of  the  playwright  and  the  art  of  the  actor. 
And  his  equipment  is  harder  to  attain  also;  for 
while  the  literary  critic  can  take  down  a  book  at 
will  to  consider  it  at  leisure,  the  dramatic  critic 
soon  learns  that  the  mere  perusal  of  a  play  is 
only  half  his  duty,  and  that  he  has  not  seized  its 

274 


A   CRITIC   OF  THE   ACTED   DRAMA:     WILLIAM   ARCHER 

full  significance  until  he  has  seen  it  acted.  He 
knows  that  no  true  drama  reveals  its  entire 
meaning  in  the  library,  where  indeed  it^  presence 
is  often  more  or  less  accidental,  but  only  on  the 
stage  itself,  to  fit  the  exigencies  of  which  it  was 
designed  and  executed.  Just  as  the  critic  of 
painting,  in  default  of  the  work  itself,  may  make 
shift  with  an  engraving  or  a  photograph,— well 
aware  that  the  reproduction  in  black-and-white 
can  give  him  only  the  form  of  the  original  and 
never  its  color, —so  the  critic  of  the  acted  drama 
cannot  help  feeling  that  the  essential  spirit  of 
tragedy  or  comedy  may  well  escape  him  if  he 
seeks  to  grasp  it  from  its  pen-and-ink  symbols 
alone  in  lieu  of  that  bodying  forth  by  flesh-and- 
blood  executants  which  the  dramatist  intended. 
Thus  it  is  that  the  literary  critic  can  command 
the  mighty  masterpieces  of  literature  at  the  cost 
of  a  month's  subscription  to  a  library;  while  the 
critic  of  the  acted  drama  has  to  take  what  he  can 
find  on  the  boards  from  time  to  time,  making 
the  best  of  his  chances,  perhaps  even  dying  at 
last  without  having  had  the  good  fortune  to  see 
on  the  stage  more  than  half  of  the  mighty  mas- 
terpieces of  the  drama.  So  it  happens  that  in 
few  fields  of  literary  endeavor  has  eminence  been 
more  strenuously  struggled  for  or  more  seldom 
attained  than  in  the  field  of  dramatic  criticism. 
As  we  call  the  roll  of  the  centuries  we  discover 

275 


A   CRITIC   OF   THE   ACTED   DRAMA:     WILLIAM   ARCHER 

the  names  of  only  two  dramatic  critics— Aristotle 
and  Lessing— on  the  list  of  great  writers  be- 
queathed to  us  by  those  who  have  gone  before. 
Among  the  citizens  of  Athens  there  was  Aristotle 
alone  to  match  with  ^schylus,  Sophocles,  Eu- 
ripides, and  Aristophanes.  Among  the  subjects 
of  Elizabeth  and  James  there  was  no  single  critic 
worthy  of  comparison  with  Marlowe  or  Jonson, 
with  Fletcher  or  Massinger.  In  the  capital  of 
Louis  XIV  there  was  only  Boileau  to  set  beside 
Corneille  and  Moliere  and  Racine— and  Boileau, 
whatever  his  rank,  is  a  critic  rather  of  literature 
than  of  the  acted  drama.  In  Germany,  just  be- 
fore Goethe  and  Schiller,  came  Lessing,  the  one 
modern  who  can  withstand,  without  shrinking, 
an  association  with  Aristotle.  The  Greek  and 
the  German  are  the  two  critics  of  the  acted 
drama  whose  supremacy  is  indisputable:  there 
is  no  third  name  to  be  placed  with  theirs. 

In  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  the 
Romanticist  revolt  changed  the  face  of  French 
literature,  and  made  ready  for  the  Realistic  move- 
ment that  followed  in  the  second  half  of  the 
century.  Hugo  and  Dumas,  Musset  and  George 
Sand,  were  followed  in  due  season  by  Augier 
and  Dumas  fils,  by  Daudet  and  Maupassant,  by 
M.  Zola  and  M.  Bourget.  And  the  French  have 
had  three  critics  who  hold  their  own  beside  these 
poets  and  dramatists  and  novelists— Sainte-Beuve 

276 


A    CRITIC    OF   THE    ACTED    DRAMA!     WILLIAM    ARCHER 

and  Taine  and  M.  Brunetiere.  Although  all  three 
have  shown  an  interest  in  the  theater  and  an 
understanding  of  the  principles  of  the  drama- 
turgic art,  no  one  of  them  dedicated  himself 
chiefly  to  dramatic  criticism.  The  more  notable 
French  dramatic  critics  of  the  century  have  been 
the  pedantic  Geffroy,  the  picturesque  Theophile 
Gautier  (who  lacked  any  real  liking  for  the  thea- 
ter and  who  had  but  a  loose  grasp  of  its  theories), 
the  trifling  and  flippant  Jules  Janin,  the  solidly 
established  Francisque  Sarcey,  and  the  brilliant 
M.  Jules  Lemaitre.  Of  these,  Sarcey  has  been 
by  far  the  most  influential,  as  he  has  deserved  to 
be  by  his  sincerity,  his  immense  experience,  and 
his  common-sense  acuteness.  Every  student  of 
the  stage  is  his  debtor  for  the  skill  with  which 
he  has  analyzed  the  conditions  of  theatric  suc- 
cess. Even  M.  Lemaitre,  individual  as  his  opin- 
ions are,  long  sat  at  Sarcey's  feet,  and  still 
accepts  most  of  Sarcey's  ideas.  It  is  true  that, 
as  Sarcey  advanced  in  years,  he  naturally  became 
a  little  less  receptive  and  a  little  more  unwilling 
to  change  his  point  of  view. 

In  the  literary  history  of  England  we  find 
Lamb  and  Hazlitt  inscribed  as  the  dramatic  critics 
of  the  early  years  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
But  it  may  be  doubted  whether  either  of  them  is 
really  to  be  classed  with  Gautier  or  Janin— still 
less  with  Sarcey  or  M.  Lemaitre.     Exquisite  as 

277 


A    CRITIC    OF    THE    ACTED    DRAMA:     WILLIAM    ARCHER 

they  nre  as  essayists,  and  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
both  of  them  now  and  again  wrote  about  the 
actor's  art  with  abundant  sympathy  and  under- 
standing, they  seem  to  me  rather  critics  of  litera- 
ture than  critics  of  the  acted  drama.  They 
discussed  the  works  of  the  Elizabethans  as 
though  Ford  and  Webster  and  Marlowe  were 
poets  rather  than  playwrights.  In  their  own  day 
the  unfortunate  divorce  between  literature  and 
the  drama  had  already  taken  place;  and,  there- 
fore, they  were  not  put  to  the  final  test  of  the 
true  dramatic  critic— the  judgment  of  an  un- 
known play  by  its  first  performance.  Nearly  all 
the  comedies  in  which  Lamb  delighted,  as  also 
nearly  all  the  tragedies  in  which  Hazlitt  saw 
Kean  act,  were  old  friends,  seen  often  before  on 
the  stage,  and  read  often  in  the  study;  so  that 
both  Lamb  and  Hazlitt  were  supplied  with  the 
standards  of  comparison  which  the  critic  of  new 
plays  must  perforce  get  along  without  as  best 
he  can. 

Little  as  the  English  dramatists  of  the  begin- 
ning of  the  nineteenth  century  demanded  criti- 
cism, those  of  the  middle  of  the  century  called 
for  even  less;  and  yet  in  George  Henry  Lewes 
England  had  a  true  dramatic  critic.  A  philoso- 
pher of  wide  range  and  keen  intelligence,  with 
ample  curiosity  as  to  all  questions  of  esthetics, 
Lewes  was  also  an  amateur  actor  and  a  profes- 

278 


A   CRITIC    OF    THE    ACTED     DRAMA:     WILLIAM    ARCHER 

sional  playwright.  His  little  volume  on  the 
'  Spanish  Drama '  survives  to  prove  his  firm  grasp 
on  the  essential  principles  of  the  dramaturgic 
craft;  and  his  collected  essays  'On  Actors  and 
the  Art  of  Acting'  may  be  cordially  recom- 
mended to  all  who  wish  to  gain  an  understand- 
ing of  histrionic  methods.  Indeed,  the  three 
books  which  I  should  suggest  to  any  one  wish- 
ing to  begin  the  study  of  the  stage  would  be 
Colley  Gibber's  'Apology,'  Mr.  Joseph  Jeffer- 
son's 'Autobiography,'  and  this  collection  of 
Lewes's  '  On  Actors  ';  for  all  three  of  them,  each 
in  its  own  way,  set  forth  the  same  sound  doc- 
trine and  with  the  same  zest  and  brio. 

Now  that  the  nineteenth  century  draws  to  an 
end,  there  is  evidence  that  literature  and  the 
drama,  after  their  long  separation,  are  to  be  re- 
married at  last.  Perhaps  we  are  witnesses 
rather  of  the  courtship  than  of  the  actual  wed- 
ding; but  we  need  no  longer  fear  that  any  one 
will  forbid  the  banns.     This  conjuncture  makes  ^ 

the  task  of    the   critic  at    once    more   difficult  '' 

and  more  necessary.  Fortunately,  the  occasion 
called  forth  the  man  it  required,  in  the  person  of 
Mr.  William  Archer,  who  is  generally  recognized 
as  the  foremost  critic  of  the  acted  drama  now 
using  our  language.  \ 

It  is  a  good  sign  for  the  future  of  our  stage 
that  the  English-speaking  dramatists  have  now 

279 


V 


A   CRITIC    OF    THE    ACTED    DRAMA:    WILLIAM   ARCHER 

begun  to  publish  their  plays;  for  it  is  a  proof 
that  they  are  no  longer  satisfied  with  the  ap- 
plause of  the  spectator,  but  desire  also  the 
approval  of  the  reader.  Upon  the  dramatist  lies 
the  heavy  burden  that  he  ought  to  be  able  to 
support  a  double  test— first,  that  of  the  theater, 
and  second,  that  of  the  closet;  and  this  also 
opens  for  him  a  double  opportunity.  With 
infrequent  exceptions,  the  dramatic  authors  of 
France  and  of  Germany  have  published  their 
plays;  and  at  last  the  dramatic  authors  of  Great 
Britain  and  the  United  States  are  following  this 
excellent  example.  So  long  as  the  plays  them- 
selves could  be  seen  only  on  the  stage,  and  so 
long  as  they  became  but  memories  as  soon  as 
they  were  taken  from  the  boards,  there  was  little 
call  for  any  collection  of  the  criticisms  these 
plays  had  evoked.  Now  that  the  plays  are  in 
our  hands  to  read,  it  is  well  that  the  most  com- 
petent of  contemporary  critics  should  republish 
also  his  record  and  analysis  of  the  impression 
they  made  upon  him  when  they  were  acted  in 
the  theater. 

The  half-dozen  annual  volumes  of  the  '  Theat- 
rical World '  in  which  Mr.  Archer  has  collected 
his  current  comment  on  the  acted  drama  of  suc- 
cessive years  are  not  only  invaluable  to  the  future 
inquirer  into  the  conditions  of  the  theater  at  the 
end  of  the  nineteenth  century,  but  are  also  in- 

280 


A   CRITIC   OF    THE    ACTED     DRAMA:     WILLIAM    ARCHER 

tensely  interesting  in  themselves.  Indeed,  Mr. 
Archer's  interest  in  the  stage  is  contagious;  and 
he  can  communicate  it  to  his  readers— except  to 
such  as  may  chance  to  be  immune  because  of 
congenital  distaste  for  the  drama.  And  here  he 
is  rather  like  Sarcey  than  like  M.  Lemaitre,  who 
is  a  little  too  detached  and  dilettante.  Mr. 
Archer  has  a  shrewdness,  a  logic,  a  scholarly 
wit,  and  a  flashing  alertness  not  unlike  M. 
Lemaitre's,  but  he  has  also  the  deep  love  of  the 
theater,  in  all  its  phases,  which  inspires  Sarcey, 
and  which  makes  them  both  take  the  stage  seri- 
ously. At  bottom  Sarcey  and  Mr.  Archer  hold 
the  theater  as  one  of  the  most  important  mani- 
festations of  human  energy.  So,  no  doubt,  does 
M.  Lemaitre;  but  his  Renanism  leads  him  a  little 
to  question  whether  anything  human  can  be 
very  important.  Moreover,  while  M.  Lemaitre 
is  sometimes  tempted  to  take  the  play  he  has 
under  consideration  merely  as  a  text  for  brilliant 
disquisition  on  whichever  of  the  broader  prob- 
lems of  existence  it  may  chance  to  suggest  to 
him,  Mr.  Archer  is  like  Sarcey  in  preferring  to 
judge  a  play  first  of  all  as  a  play,  with  due 
regard  to  its  technic,  discussing  its  message 
chiefly  when  such  a  debate  is  made  necessary  by 
the  author's  treatment  of  his  theme. 

The  French  are  the  most  accomplished  critics 
of  modern  Europe;    and  their  preeminence   is 

281 


A    CRITIC    OF    THE    ACTED    DRAMA:     WILLIAM    ARCHER 

perhaps  more  obvious  in  dramatic  than  in  any 
other  criticism— the  drama  being  the  department 
of  literature  in  which  they  have  always  been  seen 
to  best  advantage.  Therefore,  to  compare  Mr. 
Archer  with  the  two  foremost  French  critics  of 
the  acted  drama  is  to  pay  him  a  high  compli- 
ment; but  it  is  a  comparison  he  has  no  reason 
to  fear.  His  experience  in  the  theater— and  no- 
where else  does  mere  experience  count  for  so 
much— is,  of  course,  not  so  long  as  Sarcey's; 
but  it  is  far  wider.  The  French  critic  knows 
only  the  stage  of  his  own  language;  whereas  the 
English  critic  knows  not  only  the  stage  of  his 
own  language  (in  Great  Britain  and  the  United 
States),  but  that  of  France,  of  Germany,  of  Italy, 
and  of  Scandinavia.  And  whereas  both  Sarcey 
and  M.  Lemaitre  are  a  little  parochial  in  their 
patriotism,  Mr.  Archer  is  wholly  without  insu- 
larity. He  is  cosmopolitan  in  his  outlook;  and, 
so  far  from  resenting  a  foreign  flavor  in  a  foreign 
play,  he  relishes  it  keenly  and  savors  the  tang 
of  it. 

Perhaps  the  explanation  of  this  may  partly  lie 
in  the  fact  that  Mr.  Archer  is  a  Scotchman  and 
not  an  Englishman.  It  is  England  which  is  the 
stronghold  of  the  Tories,  while  Scotland  and 
Ireland  and  Wales  are  more  liberal,  not  only  in 
their  opinions,  but  also  in  their  social  organiza- 
tion.    Caste  is  still  dominant  in  England :  Scot- 

282 


A   CRITIC    OF    THE    ACTED    DRAMA:    WILLIAM    ARCHER 

land  is  more  democratic  in  its  structure.  It  was 
in  England  that  Sir  Aubrey  de  Vere  found  tiiose 
extreme  Tories  wlio,  as  he  phrased  it,  wished 
"to  uninvent  printing  and  to  undiscover  Amer- 
ica." In  more  ways  than  one  are  the  Scotch  like 
the  Yankees;  and  here  perhaps  we  can  see  one 
of  the  causes  of  Mr.  Archer's  open-minded  hos- 
pitality toward  American  plays  and  American 
players.  Certain  of  the  conditions  of  life  in 
Scotland  are  liker  to  those  in  New  England  than 
to  those  in  England.  The  Scottish  universities, 
for  example,  are  more  akin  to  the  American  col- 
leges than  they  are  to  Oxford,  that  home  of  lost 
causes.  It  was  from  the  University  of  Edin- 
burgh that  Mr.  Archer  graduated,  being  a  belated 
contemporary  of  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  with 
whom  in  after  years  his  friendship  was  close. 

He  studied  law,  and  traveled;  and  then  he 
turned  to  journalism.  His  beginning  was  ob- 
scure, as  most  beginnings  are.  He  had  to  wear 
the  mask  of  anonymity,  which  makes  difficult 
any  early  recognition  by  the  public.  He  emerged 
into  the  light  with  his  first  book,  '  English  Dra- 
matists of  To-day,'  published  in  1882,  when  as 
yet  there  was  no  sign  of  that  revival  of  intelli- 
gent interest  in  the  theater  which  was  to  come 
almost  immediately,  and  for  the  coming  of 
which  his  collected  criticism  was  a  preparation. 
Robertson's  teacup-and-saucer  comediettas  had 

283 


A   CRITIC    OF    THE    ACTED    DRAMA:    WILLIAM    ARCHER 

already  been  put  on  the  shelf;  Boucicault's  twice- 
told  plots  had  already  worn  out  their  welcome; 
and  the  blank  verse  of  Wills  and  Mr.  Gilbert  did 
not  furnish  a  hearty  meal  for  an  English  critic 
keen  set  at  the  sight  of  the  feast  then  spread 
before  the  French  critics,  who  were  called  upon 
frequently  to  discuss  new  plays  by  Augier  and 
by  Dumas  fits,  by  Labiche  and  by  Meilhac  and 
Halevy. 

In  1882  Mr.  Pinero  was  but  a  promise  of  the 
future ;  four  years  later  he  had  become  an  accom- 
plished fact;  and  it  was  in  1886  that  Mr.  Archer 
published  his  second  book,  'About  the  Theater' 
—essays  on  one  or  another  aspect  of  dramatur- 
gic or  histrionic  art.  In  the  opening  chapter  he 
dwelt  on  the  advance  made  since  the  appearance 
of  the  earlier  volume.  In  another  essay  he  dis- 
cussed the  ethics  of  theatrical  criticism.  In  a 
third  paper  he  analyzed  acutely  the  influence 
of  the  practice  of  acting  upon  the  performer 
himself. 

Perhaps  it  was  this  last  essay  which  suggested 
to  him  the  very  interesting  inquiry  the  results  of 
which  were  published  in  1888  in  'Masks  or 
Faces?  A  Study  in  the  Psychology  of  Acting,' 
Diderot's  famous  '  Paradoxe  sur  le  Comedien ' 
—which  is  an  attempt  to  prove  that  Horace 
is  wrong  and  that  the  artist  must  not  feel  if 
he  wishes  to  make  others  feel— had  become  a 

284 


A   CRITIC   OF   THE    ACTED    DRAMA:    WILLIAM   ARCHER 

theme  of  discussion.  The  foremost  actor  of 
France,  M.  Coquelin,  had  accepted  Diderot's 
assertion  absolutely,  holding  that  "  this  paradox 
is  the  truth  itself."  The  foremost  actor  of  Eng- 
land, Sir  (then  Mr.)  Henry  Irving,  in  an  intro- 
duction to  an  English  translation  of  Diderot's 
dialogue,  had  denied  its  truth  with  almost  equal 
emphasis.  Here  was  Mr.  Archer's  occasion. 
He  sent  a  set  of  questions  to  the  leading  per- 
formers of  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States, 
asking  them  when  they  lost  themselves  in  their 
parts,  and  how  and  why  and  why  not;  and  he 
supplemented  the  answers  he  received  to  this 
catechism  of  the  comedians  with  a  thorough 
examination  of  such  further  information  as 
might  be  gleaned  from  the  abundant  library  of 
histrionic  biography.  In  his  discussion  of  the 
mass  of  contradictory  material  thus  collected, 
Mr.  Archer  proved  the  possession  of  his  full 
share  of  Scotch  philosophic  acumen;  and  here- 
after this  solid  work  of  his  must  be  the  basis  of 
any  serious  consideration  of  the  essential  condi- 
tions of  the  art  of  acting. 

Less  important  than  'Masks  or  Faces?'— but 
calling  for  record  here— are  certain  other  of  Mr. 
Archer's  publications,  some  of  them  earlier  and 
some  of  them  later.  He  issued  in  1883  a  critical 
study  of  '  Henry  Irving,  Actor  and  Manager.' 
He  planned  and  edited  a  series  of  lives  of  '  Emi- 

285 


A    CRITIC    OF    THE    ACTED    DRAMA:     WILLIAM    ARCHER 

nent  Actors,'  to  which  he  himself  contributed  in 
1890  an  admirable  biography  of  Macready— 
admirable  especially  in  the  fairness  and  the  ful- 
ness with  which  he  treated  the  fatal  quarrel 
between  the  British  actor  and  Edwin  Forrest. 
With  his  friend  Mr.  R.  W.  Lowe— to  whom  all 
students  of  the  stage  are  eternally  indebted  for  a 
worthy  edition  of  Colley  Gibber's  immortal 
'  Apology '—Mr.  Archer  has  also  edited  and 
amply  annotated  three  collections  of  the  more 
interesting  dramatic  criticisms  of  his  English 
predecessors,  one  volume  of  Hazlitt's,  another  of 
Leigh  Hunt's,  and  a  third  divided  between  Lewes 
and  John  Forster  (the  biographer  of  Dickens,  the 
friend  of  Macready,  and  the  enemy  of  Forrest). 
As  a  translator  Mr.  Archer  has  also  laid  us  under 
obligation  by  Englishing  the  prose  plays  of  Ibsen, 
the  short-stories  of  Kielland,  and  the  critical 
biography  of  Shakspere  by  Dr.  Brandes. 

Between  the  publication  of  '  English  Dramatists 
of  To-day  '  and  his  undertaking  of  the  investiga- 
tion into  the  foundations  of  the  histrionic  art  em- 
bodied in  '  Masks  or  Faces  ?  '  Mr.  Archer  had 
become  one  of  the  best  known  of  English  critics 
of  the  acted  drama.  He  had  learned  his  trade  by 
that  time,  and  was  master  of  his  tools.  Although 
he  took  the  art  of  the  stage  seriously,  he  was 
never  pedantic  or  pedagogic  in  his  manner,  but 
managed  to  be  light  and  graceful  even  in  dealing 

386 


A   CRITIC    OF    THE    ACTED    DRAMA:    WILLIAM    ARCHER 

with  ethical  intricacies.  He  proved  early  that  he 
was  not  one  of  the  Scots  who  joke  with  diffi- 
culty; indeed,  his  writing  is  distinctly  witty, 
\  with  the  playful  allusiveness  natural  to  a  well-fur- 
■nished  mind.  He  already  wrote  admirable  Eng- 
lish, although  with  an  apparent  ease  and  absence 
of  effort  that  might  not  satisfy  those  whose  ideal 
is  rather  the  steam-dried  style  of  Pater  or  the 
verbal  mosaics  of  Stevenson.  He  had  joined  the 
staff  of  the  weekly  World  of  tandon;  and  his 
articles  were  thereafter  identified  by  his  initials. 
Although  the  practice  of  contemporary  journal- 
ism throughout  the  English-speaking  community 
still  permits  criticisms  which  are  not  warranted 
by  the  signatures  of  their  writers,  there  is  a 
growing  conviction  that  an  anonymous  review 
is  almost  as  unworthy  a  thing  as  an  anonymous 
letter.  Whether  Mr.  Archer  is  of  this  opinion 
or  not,  his  rapid  development,  when  he  was 
allowed  to  speak  for  himself  and  in  his  own 
person,  is  evidence  in  favor  of  the  French  system 
of  warranting  an  opinion  by  a  signature. 

Equally  rapid  was  Mr.  Archer's  rise  in  repu- 
tation-. Indeed,  for  a  dozen  years  now  Mr. 
Archer's  supremacy  among  English  dramatic 
critics  has  been  indisputable.  More  than  any  of 
the  others  has  he  the  fourfold  qualification  of 
the  merely  literary  critic— insight  and  equipment, 
sympathy  and  disinterestedness.     More  than  any 

287 


A   CRITIC    OF    THE    ACTED    DRAMA  I    WILLIAM    ARCHER 

''other  has  he  the  threefold  qualification  of  the 
purely  theatrical  critic— an  understanding  of  the 
principles  of  three  arts  all  closely  related  and  yet 
/  \  {  wholly  distinct,  the  art  of  the  playwright,  the 
art  of  the  actor,  and  the  art  of  the  stage-manager. 
Diderot  wrote  a  '  Paradox  on  the  Comedian ' ; 
but  he  failed  to  formulate  what  might  fairly  be 
called  the  '  Paradox  of  the  Dramatic  Critic'     By 
this    I   mean   to   suggest   the   double   disability 
under  which  the   dramatic  critic  must  always 
labor  when  he  is  a  spectator  at  the  first  night  of 
a  new  play.     Perforce  he  has  to  judge  the  play 
through  the  performance;  and  he  has  to  judge 
the  performers  as  the  play  may  chance  to  allow 
them  to  evince  their  ability.     More  than  once 
has  bad  acting  betrayed  a  good  piece;  and  more 
than  once  has  excellent  acting  cheated  those  who 
were  charmed  by  it  into  a  belief  that  the  play 
itself  was  far  better  than  it  really  was.     The 
critic  of  painting  can  take  his  place  before  a  pic- 
ture, and  study  it  at  his  leisure;  seeing  it  as  it  is 
directly,  and  not  through  any  distorting  medium. 
The  critic  of  literature  can  read  as  carefully  as  he 
chooses,  even  turning  back  to  reread  when  he 
thinks  this  necessary;  and  he  has  in  his  hand 
the  book,  complete  in  itself,  making  its  appeal 
immediately  and  without  calling  in  the  aid  of 
anything  else.     But  the  critic  of  the  acted  drama 
can  perceive  a  new  play  only  through  the  refract- 

288 


A   CRITIC   OF    THE    ACTED    DRAMA:    WILLIAM    ARCHER 

ing  lens  of  the  first  performance  as  that  glides 
swiftly  past  his  eyes.     It  is  true  that  an  intimate 
acquaintance  with  the  theater,  an  immense  ex- 
perience of  the  stage,  an  ever-alert  cautiousness, 
sometimes  seem  to  enable  some  dramatic  critics 
to  develop  a  sixth  sense,  as  it  were,  by  which 
this  double  difficulty  can  be  overcome;  and  in 
the  surmounting  of  this  disadvantage  I  know  of 
no  one  who  has  been  so  fortunate  as  Mr.  Archer 
—with  the  possible  exception  of  Sarcey. 
,  In  the  introduction  to  his  *  English  Dramatists 
of  To-day '  Mr.  Archer  pointed  out  that  the  drama 
in  England  was  then  flourishing  as  "  a  non-liter- 
ary product,"  and  that  it  did  "  not  exist  as  litera- 
/ture";  and  he  expressed  a  wish  that  there  might 
arise  in  Great  Britain  "  a  body  of  playwrights, 
however  small,  whose  works  are  not  only  acted, 
but  printed  and  read."     And  he  declared  that  he 
did  not,  in  his  "  most  sanguine  moments,  venture 
\     to  hope  that  this  nineteenth  century  will  witness 
its  attainment."     That  was  written  late  in  1882; 
■    and  this  paper  is  written  early  in  1899,  not  sev- 
■  enteen  full  years  after:  the  nineteenth  century 
'  has  not  come  to  its  final  year,  but  Mr.  Archer's 
;  hope  has  been  realized.     It  is  possible  now  to 
/  buy  and  to  read  not  a  few  of  the  plays  of  Mr. 
W.   S.   Gilbert,   Mr.  A.  W.  Pinero,   Mr.  H.  A. 
Jones,   Mr.   Anthony   Hope,  and  Mr.  Augustus 
^Thomas;  and  it  seems  probable  that  sooner  or 

289 


/ 


A   CRITIC   OF    THE   ACTED     DRAMA!    WILLIAM    ARCHER 

later  we  shall  be  able  to,  purchase  and  to  peruse 
those  of  Mr.  Bronson  Howard,  Mr.  William  Gil- 
lette, and  Mr.  Sydney  Grundy.  To  say  this  is 
to  say  that  the  dramatist  has  awakened  to  his 
double  opportunity,  and  is  striving  to  rise  abreast 
of  it. 

In  the  bringing  about  of  this  uplifting  of  con- 
temporary English  dramatic  literature  no  single 
influence  has  been  so  potent  as  that  of  Mr. 
Archer.  As  a  translator  of  Ibsen,  he  revealed 
how  a  technic  of  a  most  skilful  simplicity  could 
be  applied  to  problems  of  pressing  importance. 
As  a  critic  of  the  acted  drama,  he  was  unfailingly 
encouraging  to  every  playwright  who  showed 
the  slightest  inclination  to  think  for  himself— or 
even  to  think  at  all.  He  was  not  intolerant  of 
any  type  of  play;  nor  was  he  hostile  to  any  form 
of  dramatic  art,  as  any  one  can  see  by  consult- 
ing the  five  annual  volumes  of  the  '  Theatrical 
World  '  in  which  he  reprinted  his  weekly  reviews 
of  the  London  theater. 

It  is  to  the  public  rather  than  to  the  playwright 
that  the  critics  owe  their  plainest  duty.  Their 
obligation  it  is  not  to  give  advice  to  the  artist,— 
for  he  is  a  feeble  craftsman  who  does  not  know 
his  trade  better  than  any  outsider  can,— but  to 
report  to  the  possible  playgoer  what  manner  of 
play  this  is  that  has  been  produced,  wherein  it 
seems  to  them  good,  and  what  its  blemishes  are. 

290 


A   CRITIC   OF    THE   ACTED    DRAMA:    WILLIAM   ARCHER 

Only  indirectly  do  the  critics  influence  the  artist 
—by  influencing  the  public,  by  creating  currents 
of  opinion  with  which  the  artist  floats  uncon- 
sciously or  against  which  he  reacts  sturdily. 
As  Lowell  said,  the  force  of  public  opinion  is 
like  the  pressure  of  the  atmosphere:  you  can- 
not see  it,  but  it  is  fifteen  pounds  to  the  square 
inch  nevertheless.  To  Mr.  Archer,  more  than  to 
any  one  else,  is  due  the  existence  of  a  sympa- 
thetic welcome  for  the  efforts  of  a  dramatist  here 
and  there  to  step  out  of  the  beaten  track  and  to 
blaze  his  own  trail.  More  often  than  not  these 
efforts  are  futile  enough;  but  now  and  again 
they  do  not  fail— and  even  the  failures  are  in- 
structive and  interesting  to  any  one  who  is  on 
the  lookout  for  the  little  cloud  no  larger  than  a 
man's  hand  which  is  to  bring  the  fertilizing  rain. 
In  the  main,  Mr.  Archer's  criticism  is  sympa- 
thetic, although  his  sympathy  is  sane  always 
and  never  sentimental.  He  has  his  antipathies 
also;  as  a  Scotchman,  he  is  probably  a  good 
hater;  but  we  find  no  protruding  of  petty  ani- 
mosities in  his  pages.  Certain  things  in  the 
theater  of  to-day  he  detests;  and  he  says  what 
he  thinks:  but  he  does  not  dwell  on  these  things 
again  and  again,  losing  his  temper.  He  drops 
on  them  a  few  words  of  scorching  scorn  as  he 
passes  by,  and  then  gives  his  time  rather  to  the 
things  he  likes,   to  the  things  that  are  worth 

*7  *  •      p»'jy.i'rtt^t^'*-mw>ii,»v-frt--  • 


A    CRITIC    OF    THE   ACTED    DRAMA:    WILLIAM    ARCHER 

while.  Here  he  is  at  odds  with  those  who  cry 
aloud  for  a  slashing  criticism  that  shall  free  the 
land  of  humbugs  and  pretenders  and  quacks. 
But  he  is  in  agreement  with  the  practice  of  all 
the  foremost  critics  of  the  past :  he  is  in  agreement 
with  the  formal  theory  of  the  foremost  critic  of 
our  century.  Goethe  confessed  that  he  was 
"  more  and  more  convinced  that  whenever  one 
has  to  vent  an  opinion  on  the  actions  or  on  the 
writings  of  others,  unless  this  be  done  from  a 
certain  one-sided  enthusiasm,  or  from  a  loving 
interest  in  the  person  or  the  work,  the  result  is 
hardly  worth  gathering  up.  Sympathy  and 
enjoyment  in  what  we  see  are,  in  fact,  the  only 
realities." 
/(1899) 


2^2 


XII 

THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF 
COLLABORATION 


[This  paper,  prepared  to  serve  as  an  introduction  to  certain 
stories  written  in  partnership  with  my  friends,  is  here  reprinted 
by  permission  of  Messrs.  Longmans,  Green,  &  Co.] 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF 
COLLABORATION 

IT  may  be  said  that  curiosity  is  the  only  useful 
vice,  since  without  it  there  would  be  neither 
discovery  nor  invention;  and  curiosity  it  is  which 
lends  interest  to  many  a  book  written  in  collab- 
oration, the  reader  being  less  concerned  about 
the  merits  of  the  work  than  he  is  with  guessing 
at  the  respective  shares  of  the  associated  authors. 
To  many  of  us  a  novel  by  two  writers  is  merely 
a  puzzle,  and  we  seek  to  solve  the  enigma  of  its 
double  authorship,  accepting  it  as  a  nut  to  crack 
even  when  the  kernel  is  little  likely  to  be  more 
digestible  than  the  shell.  Before  a  play  of  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher  or  a  novel  of  MM.  Erckmann- 
Chatrian  not  a  few  find  themselves  asking  a 
double  question.  First,  "  What  was  the  part  of 
each  partner  in  the  writing  of  the  book.?  "  And 
second,  "  How  is  it  possible  for  two  men  to  be 
concerned  in  the  making  of  one  work?  " 

The  answer  to  the  first  question  can  hardly 
ever  be  given;  even  the  collaborators  themselves 

295 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF  COLLABORATION 

are  at  a  loss  to  specify  their  own  contributions. 
Wiien  two  men  have  worked  together  honestly 
and  heartily  in  the  inventing,  the  developing,  the 
constructing,  the  writing,  and  the  revising  of  a 
book  or  a  play,  it  is  often  impossible  for  either 
partner  to  pick  out  his  own  share.  Certain  things 
he  may  recognize  as  his  own,  and  certain  other 
things  he  may  credit  frankly  to  his  ally;  but  the 
rest  was  the  result  of  the  collaboration  itself, 
contributed  by  both  parties  together  and  not  by 
either  separately.  To  explain  this  more  in  detail 
calls  for  an  answer  to  the  second  question,  and 
requires  a  careful  consideration  of  the  principle 
of  collaboration,  and  a  tentative  explanation  of 
the  manner  in  which  two  men  may  write  one 
book. 

I  confine  myself  to  a  discussion  of  literary 
partnerships,  because  in  literature  collaboration 
is  more  complete,  more  intimate,  than  it  is  in  the 
other  arts.  When  an  architect  aids  a  sculptor, 
when  Mr,  Stamford  White,  for  instance,  plans 
the  mounting  of  the  '  Lincoln '  or  the  '  Farragut ' 
of  Mr.  Saint-Gaudens,  the  respective  shares  of 
each  artist  may  be  determined  with  precision. 
So  it  is  also  when  we  find  Rubens  painting  the 
figures  in  a  landscape  of  Snyders.  Nor  are  we 
under  any  doubt  as  to  the  contribution  of  each 
collaborator  when  we  hear  an  operetta  by  Mr. 
Gilbert  and  Sir  Arthur  Sullivan;  we  knew  that 

296 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF  COLLABORATION 

one  wrote  the  words  and  the  other  the  music, 
and  the  division  of  labor  does  not  seem  unnatural, 
although  it  is  not  necessary:  Wagner,  for  ex- 
ample, composed  the  score  to  his  own  book. 
But  no  one  is  puzzled  by  the  White-Saint-Gau- 
dens  combination,  the  Rubens-Snyders,  or  the 
Gilbert  and  Sullivan,  as  most  of  us  are,  for  exam- 
ple, by  the  alliance  of  Charles  Dickens  and  Wilkie 
Collins  in  the  writing  of  *No  Thoroughfare.' 

If  the  doubt  is  great  before  a  novelet  composed 
by  two  authors  of  individualities  as  distinct  as 
those  of  Dickens  and  of  Collins,  how  much 
greater  may  it  be  before  books  written  by  more 
than  two  partners.  A  few  years  ago,  four  clever 
American  story-tellers  cooperated  in  writing  a 
satirical  tale,  the  '  King's  Men  ';  and  long  before, 
four  brilliant  French  writers,  Mme.  de  Girardin, 
Gautier,  Sandeau,  and  Mery,  had  set  them  the 
example  by  composing  that  epistolary  romance, 
the  'Cross  of  Berny.'  There  is  an  English  story 
in  six  chapters  by  six  authors,  among  whom 
were  the  younger  Hood,  the  late  T.  W.  Robert- 
son, and  Mr.  W.  S.  Gilbert;  and  there  is  an 
American  story  happily  entitled,  *  Six  of  One,  by 
Half  a  Dozen  of  the  Other'— Mrs.  Stowe  being 
among  the  half-dozen. 

Six  authors  for  a  single  story,  or  even  four, 
may  seem  to  some  a  woeful  waste  of  effort,  and 
so,  no  doubt,  it  is;  but  1  have  found  recorded 

297 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF  COLLABORATION 

cases  of  more  extravagant  prodigality.  In  France, 
an  association  of  three  or  four  in  the  author- 
ship of  a  farce  is  not  at  all  uncommon;  and  it 
is  there  that  collaboration  has  been  carried  to  its 
most  absurd  extreme.  M.  Jules  Goizet,  in  his 
curious  '  Histoire  Anecdotique  de  la  Collabora- 
tion au  Theatre '  (Paris,  1867),  mentions  a  one-act 
play  which  was  performed  in  Paris  in  181 1,  and 
which  was  the  work  of  twenty-four  dramatists ; 
and  he  records  the  production  in  1834,  also 
in  Paris,  of  another  one-act  play,  which  was 
prepared  for  a  benefit  of  the  Dramatic  Authors' 
Society,  and  which  had  no  fewer  than  thirty-six 
authors.  This  suggests  an  intellectual  poverty 
as  barren  as  that  once  satirized  by  Chamfort  in 
Prussia,  when,  after  he  had  said  a  good  thing, 
he  saw  the  others  talking  it  over  at  the  end  of 
the  table.  "See  those  Germans,"  he  cried, 
"  clubbing  together  to  take  a  joke." 

For  the  most  part  these  combination-ventures 
are  mere  curiosities  of  literature.  Nothing  of 
real  value  is  likely  to  be  manufactured  by  a  joint- 
stock  company  of  unlimited  authorship.  The 
literary  partnerships  whose  paper  sells  on 
'Change  at  par  have  but  two  members.  It  is 
this  association  of  two,  and  of  two  only,  to 
which  we  refer  generally  when  we  speak  of  col- 
laboration. In  fact,  literary  collaboration  might 
be  defined,  fairly  enough,  as  "  the  union  of  two 

298 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF  COLLABORATION 

writers  for  the  production  of  one  book."  This  is, 
of  a  truth,  the  only  collaboration  worthy  of  serious 
criticism,  the  only  one  really  vital  and  pregnant. 
Like  any  other  partnership,  a  collaboration  is 
unsatisfactory  and  unsuccessful  unless  it  is 
founded  on  mutual  esteem.  The  partners  must 
have  sympathy  for  each  other,  and  respect.  Each 
must  be  tolerant  of  the  other's  opinions;  each 
must  be  ready  to  yield  a  point  when  need  be. 
In  all  associations  there  must  be  concessions 
from  one  to  the  other.  These  are  the  negative 
qualities  of  a  good  collaborator.  And  chief 
among  the  positive  necessities  is  the  willingness 
of  each  to  do  his  full  share  of  the  work.  A 
French  wit  has  declared  that  the  happiest  mar- 
riages are  those  in  which  one  is  loved  and  the 
other  lets  himself  (or  herself)  be  loved.  Collab- 
oration is  a  sort  of  marriage,  but  the  witticism 
does  not  here  hold  true,  although  Mr.  Andrew 
Lang  has  declared  that  in  most  collaborations 
one  man  did  all  the  work  while  the  other  man 
looked  on.  No  doubt  this  happens  now  and 
again,  but  a  partnership  of  this  kind  is  not  likely 
to  last  long.  Mr.  Lang  has  also  quoted  from 
the  '  Souvenirs  Dramatiques '  of  the  elder  Dumas 
an  opinion  of  that  most  delightful  of  romancers 
to  the  effect  that  when  two  men  are  |at  work 
together  "  one  is  always  the  dupe,  and  he  is  the 
man  of  talent." 

^99 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF  COLLABORATION 

It  is  pleasant  to  be  able  to  controvert  the  testi- 
mony of  the  great  Dumas  by  the  exhibits  in  his 
own  case.  Of  all  the  mighty  mass  of  Dumas's 
work,  what  survives  now,  a  score  of  years  after 
his  death,  and  what  bids  fair  to  survive  at  least 
threescore  and  ten  years  longer,  are  two  or  three 
cycles  of  brilliant  and  exciting  narratives :  '  Monte 
Cristo,'  the  'Three  Musketeers,'  with  its  sequels, 
and  the  stories  of  which  Chicot  is  the  hero— all 
written  in  collaboration  with  Auguste  Maquet. 

Scribe  is  perhaps  the  only  contemporary  author 
who  rivaled  Dumas  in  fecundity  and  in  popular- 
ity; and  Scribe's  evidence  contradicts  Dumas's, 
although  both  were  persistent  collaborators.  Of 
all  the  hundreds  of  Scribe's  plays,  scarce  half  a 
dozen  were  written  by  him  unaided.  When  he 
collected  his  writings  into  a  uniform  edition,  he 
dedicated  this  to  his  many  collaborators;  and 
he  declared  that  while  the  few  works  he  had 
composed  alone  were  hard  labor,  those  which 
he  had  done  in  partnership  were  a  pleasure. 
And  we  know  from  M.  Legouve,  one  of  Scribe's 
associates,  that  Scribe  generally  preferred  to  do 
all  the  mere  writing  himself.  The  late  Eugene 
Labiche,  almost  as  prolific  a  playwright  as  Scribe 
and  quite  as  popular,  did  nothing  except  with 
a  partner;  and  he,  so  we  are  told  by  Augier,  who 
once  composed  a  comedy  with  him,  also  liked 
to  do  all  the  actual  writing. 

300 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF  COLLABORATION 

In  a  genuine  collaboration,  when  the  joint 
work  is  a  true  chemical  union  and  not  a  mere 
mechanical  mixture,  it  matters  little  who  holds 
the  pen.  The  main  advantage  of  a  literary  part- 
nership is  in  the  thorough  discussion  of  the  cen- 
tral idea  and  of  its  presentation  in  every  possible 
aspect.  Art  and  genius,  so  Voltaire  asserted, 
consist  in  finding  all  that  is  in  one's  subject,  and 
in  not  seeking  outside  of  it.  When  a  situation 
has  been  talked  over  thoroughly  and  traced  out 
to  its  logical  conclusion,  and  when  a  character 
has  been  considered  from  every  angle  and  devel- 
oped to  its  inevitable  end,  nine  tenths  of  the  task 
is  accomplished.  The  putting  down  on  paper 
of  the  situation  and  the  character  is  but  the  cloth- 
ing of  a  babe  already  alive  and  kicking. 

Perhaps  the  unity  of  impression  which  we  get 
from  some  books  written  in  partnership  is  due 
to  the  fact  that  the  writing  was  always  the  work 
of  the  same  partner.  Scribe,  for  example,  was 
not  an  author  of  salient  individuality,  but  the 
plays  which  bear  his  name  are  unmistakably  his 
handiwork.  Labiche  also,  like  Scribe,  was  ready 
to  collaborate  with  anybody  and  everybody;  but 
his  trade-mark  is  woven  into  the  texture  of  every 
play  that  bears  his  name.  It  is  understood  that 
the  tales  of  MM.  Erckmann-Chatrian  are  written 
out  by  M.  Erckmann  and  revised  by  M.  Chatrian, 
I  have  heard,  on  what  authority  I  cannot  say, 

301 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF  COLLABORATION 

that  of  the  long  series  of  stories  bearing  the 
names  of  Besant  and  Rice,  all  that  the  late  James 
Rice  actually  wrote  with  his  own  pen  was  the 
first  chapter  or  two  of  their  first  book,  *  Ready 
Money  Mortiboy.'  This  assertion,  whether  well 
founded  or  not,  gains  color  of  truth  from  the 
striking  similarity  of  style,  not  to  call  it  identity, 
of  the  Besant  and  Rice  novels  with  the  novels  of 
the  surviving  member  of  the  partnership.  Yet, 
if  one  may  judge  by  the  preface  he  has  prefixed 
to  the  library  edition  of  '  Ready  Money  Mortiboy,' 
Sir  Walter  Besant  would  be  the  last  one  to  deny 
that  Mr.  Rice  was  a  full  partner  in  the  firm,  bear- 
ing an  equal  share  in  the  burden  and  heat  of  the 
day.  Comparing  the  novels  of  dual  authorship 
with  those  of  the  survivor  alone,  it  is  perhaps 
possible  to  ascribe  to  Mr.  Rice  a  fancy  for  foreign 
characters  and  a  faculty  of  rendering  them  vigor- 
ously, a  curious  scent  for  actual  oddity,  a  bolder 
handling  than  Sir  Walter  Besant's,  and  a  stronger 
fondness  for  dramatic  incident,  not  to  say  melo- 
dramatic. The  joint  novels  have  a  certain  kin- 
ship to  the  virile  tales  of  Charles  Reade;  but 
little  trace  of  this  family  likeness  is  to  be  found 
in  the  later  works  of  Sir  Walter  Besant  alone, 
whose  manner  is  gentler  and  more  caressing, 
with  a  more  delicate  humor  and  a  subtler  flavor 
of  irony. 
But  any  endeavor  to  sift  out  the  contribution 

302 


THE   ART   AND   MYSTERY   OF    COLLABORATION 

of  one  collaborator  from  that  of  his  fellow  is 
futile— if  the  union  has  been  a  true  marriage.  It 
leads  to  the  splitting  of  hairs  and  to  the  building 
of  more  than  one  hypothesis  on  the  point  of  a 
single  needle— surely  as  idle  a  task  as  any  ever 
attempted  by  a  Shaksperian  commentator.  I 
doubt,  indeed,  if  this  etfort  "to  go  behind  the 
returns  "—to  use  an  Americanism  as  expressive 
as  an  Americanism  ought  to  be— is  even  permis- 
sible, except  possibly  after  the  partnership  is  dis- 
solved. Under  the  most  favorable  circumstances 
the  inquiry  is  little  likely  to  be  profitable.  Who 
shall  declare  whether  the  father  or  the  mother  is 
the  real  parent  of  a  child  ? 

It  is  interesting,  no  doubt,  and  often  instruc- 
tive to  note  the  influence  of  two  authors  on  each 
other;  to  consider  the  effect  of  the  combination 
of  their  diverse  talents  and  temperaments;  to 
discover  how  the  genius  of  one  conflicts  with 
that  of  the  other  or  complements  it;  to  observe 
how  at  one  point  the  strength  of  A  reinforces 
the  weakness  of  B,  and  how  at  another  point  the 
finer  taste  of  B  adroitly  curbs  the  more  exuberant 
energy  of  A;  and  to  remark  how  the  conjunction 
of  two  men  of  like  minds  and  of  equally  ardent 
convictions  sometimes  will  result  in  a  work 
harsher  and  more  strenuous  than  either  would 
produce  alone. 

For  curious  investigation  of  this  sort  there  is 

303 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF  COLLABORATION 

no  lack  of  material,  since  collaboration  has  been 
attractive  to  not  a  few  of  the  foremost  figures  in 
the  history  of  literature.  The  list  includes  not 
only  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  among  the  mighty 
Elizabethans,  but  Shakspere  and  almost  every 
one  of  his  fellow-dramatists— not  only  Corneille, 
Moliere,  and  Racine,  but  almost  every  other 
notable  name  in  the  history  of  the  French  theater. 
Cervantes  and  Calderon  and  Lope  de  Vega  took 
partners  in  Spain ;  and  in  Germany  Schiller  and 
Goethe  worked  together.  In  Great  Britain  Addi- 
son and  Steele  united  in  the  Spectator;  and  in  the 
United  States  Irving  and  Paulding  combined  in 
'Salmagundi,'  as  did  Drake  and  Halleck  in  the 
'  Croakers,' 

The  list  might  be  extended  almost  indefinitely, 
but  it  is  long  enough  to  allow  of  one  observation 
—an  observation  sufficiently  obvious.  It  is  that 
no  great  poem  has  ever  been  written  by  two  men 
together,  nor  any  really  great  novel.  Collabora- 
tion has  served  the  cause  of  periodical  literature. 
But  it  has  been  most  frequent  and  most  fertile 
among  dramatists.  We  ask  why  this  is— and 
the  answer  is  ready.  It  is  because  a  play  calls 
primarily  for  forethought,  ingenuity,  construc- 
tion, and  compression,  in  the  attaining  of  which 
two  heads  are  indubitably  better  than  one.  And 
here  we  are  nigh  to  laying  hold  on  the  root  of 
the  matter.     Here  we  have  ready  to  hand  what 

304 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF  COLLABORATION 

may  help  toward  a  definition  of  the  possibilities 
and  of  the  limitations  of  literary  partnership. 

Collaboration  fails  to  satisfy  when  there  is  need 
of  profound  meditation,  of  solemn  self-interroga- 
tion, or  of  lofty  imagination  lifting  itself  freely 
toward  the  twin  peaks  of  Parnassus.  Where 
there  may  be  a  joy  in  the  power  of  unexpected 
expansion,  and  where  there  may  be  a  charm  of 
veiled  beauty,  vague  and  fleeting,  visible  at  a 
glimpse  only  and  intangible  always,  two  men 
would  be  each  in  the  other's  way.  In  the  effort 
to  fix  these  fugitive  graces  they  would  but  trip 
over  each  other's  heels.  A  task  of  this  delicacy 
belongs  of  right  to  the  lonely  student  in  the  silent 
watches  of  the  night,  or  in  solitary  walks  under 
the  greenwood  tree  and  far  from  the  madding 
crowd. 

Collaboration  succeeds  most  abundantly  where 
clearness  is  needed,  where  precision,  skill,  and 
logic  are  looked  for,  where  we  expect  simplicity 
of  motive,  sharpness  of  outline,  ingenuity  of  con- 
struction, and  cleverness  of  effect.  Collaboration 
may  be  a  potent  coadjutor  wherever  technic  is  a 
pleasure  for  its  own  sake— and  the  sense  of  art 
is  dull  in  a  time  or  in  a  place  which  does  not 
delight  in  sound  workmanship  and  in  the  adroit 
devices  of  a  loving  craftsman.  Perhaps,  indeed, 
collaboration  may  tend— or,  at  least,  it  may  be 
tempted  now  and  again— to  sacrifice  matter  to 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF  COLLABORATION 

manner.  Those  enamored  of  technic  may  con- 
sider rather  the  excellence  of  the  form  than  the 
value  of  the  fact  upon  which  their  art  is  to  be 
exercised.  Yet  it  may  be  doubted  whether  there 
is  any  real  danger  to  literature  in  a  craving  for 
the  utmost  technical  skill. 

In  much  of  Byron's  work  Matthew  Arnold 
found  "  neither  deliberate  scientific  construction, 
nor  yet  the  instinctive  artistic  creation  of  poetic 
wholes."  Accidental  excellence,  an  intuitive  at- 
taining of  the  ideal,  the  instinctive  artistic  crea- 
tion of  poetic  wholes,  is  not  to  be  expected  from 
a  partnership— indeed,  is  hardly  possible  to  it. 
But  a  partnership  is  likely  to  attempt  deliberate 
scientific  construction  owing  to  the  mutual  criti- 
cism of  the  joint  authors;  and  by  collaboration 
the  principles  of  scientific  construction  are  con- 
veyed from  one  to  another,  to  the  advancement 
of  the  art  itself  and  to  the  unmistakable  improve- 
ment of  the  mere  journeyman-work  of  the  aver- 
age man  of  letters.  For  example,  many  even  of 
the  best  British  novels  seem  formless  when 
compared  with  the  masterly  structure  of  any 
good  French  story;  and  perhaps  the  habit  of  col- 
laboration which  obtains  in  France  is  partly  to 
be  praised  for  this. 

All  things  have  the  defect  of  their  qualities  as 
well  as  the  quality  of  their  defects.  Collabora- 
tion may  be  considered  as  a  labor-saving  device; 

306 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF  COLLABORATION 

and,  like  other  labor-saving  devices,  it  sometimes 
results  in  a  loss  of  individuality.  One  is  inclined 
to  suspect  a  lack  of  spontaneity  in  the  works 
which  two  authors  have  written  together,  and 
in  which  we  are  likely  to  fmd  polish,  finish,  and 
perfection  of  mechanism.  To  call  the  result  of 
collaboration  often  over-labored,  or  to  condemn 
it  as  cut-and-dried,  would  be  to  express  with 
unduly  brutal  frankness  the  criticism  it  is  best 
merely  to  suggest.  By  the  very  fact  of  a  part- 
nership with  its  talking  over,  its  searching  dis- 
cussion, its  untiring  pursuit  of  the  idea  into  the 
most  remote  fastnesses,  there  may  be  an  over- 
sharpness  of  outline,  a  deprivation  of  that  vague- 
ness of  contour  not  seldom  strangely  fascinating. 
No  doubt  in  the  work  of  two  men  there  is  a 
loss  of  the  unexpected,  and  the  story  must  of 
necessity  move  straight  forward  by  the  shortest 
road,  not  lingering  by  the  wayside  in  hope  of 
windfalls.  There  is  less  chance  of  unforeseen 
developments  suggesting  themselves  as  the  pen 
speeds  on  its  way  across  the  paper— and  every 
writer  knows  how  the  pen  often  runs  away  with 
him  across  country  and  over  many  a  five-barred 
gate  which  he  had  never  intended  to  take:  but 
as  there  is  less  chance  of  the  unforeseen,  so  is 
there  also  less  chance  that  the  unforeseen  will 
be  worth  having.  Above  all  is  there  far  less 
likelihood  of  the  writer's  suddenly  finding  him- 

307 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF  COLLABORATION 

self  up  a  blind  alley  with  a  sign  of  No  Thorough- 
fare staring  him  in  the  face.  It  has  been  objected 
that  in  books  prepared  in  partnership  even  the 
writing  is  hard  and  arid,  as  though  each  writer 
were  working  on  a  foreign  suggestion  and  lack- 
ing the  freedom  with  which  a  man  may  treat 
his  own  invention.  If  a  writer  feels  thus,  the 
partnership  is  unprofitable  and  unnatural,  and  he 
had  best  get  a  divorce  as  soon  as  may  be.  In  a 
genuine  collaboration  each  of  the  parties  thereto 
ought  to  have  so  far  contributed  to  the  story  that 
he  can  consider  every  incident  to  be  his,  and  his 
the  whole  work  when  it  is  completed. 

As  it  happens,  there  is  one  department  of  litera- 
ture in  which  the  defect  of  collaboration  almost 
becomes  a  quality.  For  a  drama  deliberate  sci- 
entific construction  is  absolutely  essential.  In 
play-making  an  author  must  know  the  last  word 
before  he  sets  down  the  first.  From  the  rigid 
limitations  of  time  and  space  there  is  no  room 
on  the  stage  for  unexpected  development.  Vol- 
taire tells  us  that  there  were  misers  before  the 
invention  of  money;  and  no  doubt  there  were 
literary  partnerships  before  the  first  playhouse 
was  built.  But  the  value  of  collaboration  to  the 
playwright  has  been  instinctively  recognized 
whenever  and  wherever  the  theater  has  flourished 
most  abundantly;  and  as  soon  as  the  dramas  of 
a  country  are  of  domestic  manufacture,  and  cease 

308 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF  COLLABORATION 

to  be  mainly  imported  from  abroad,  the  play- 
makers  take  to  collaboration  immediately. 

In  the  golden  era  of  Spain,  when  Lope  de  Vega 
and  Calderon  were  writing  for  the  stage,  they 
had  partners  and  pupils.  In  England  there  was 
scarce  one  of  all  the  marvelous  company  of  the 
Elizabethan  dramatists  who  did  not  join  hands 
in  the  making  of  plays.  Fletcher,  for  example, 
wrote  with  Massinger  even  while  Beaumont  was 
alive.  Chapman  had  for  associates  Marston,  and 
Shirley,  and  Ben  Jonson.  Dekker  worked  in 
partnership  with  Ford,  Webster,  Massinger,  and 
Middleton;  while  Middleton  combined  with 
Dekker,  Fletcher,  Rowley,  and  Ben  Jonson. 

In  France,  a  country  where  the  true  principles 
of  the  play-maker's  art  are  most  thoroughly 
understood,  Rotrou  and  Corneille  worked  to- 
gether with  three  others  on  five-act  tragedies 
barely  outlined  by  Cardinal  Richelieu.  Corneille 
and  Quinault  aided  Moliere  in  the  writing  of 
'Psyche.'  Boileau  and  La  Fontaine  and  other 
friends  helped  Racine  to  complete  the '  Plaideurs.' 
In  the  present  century,  when  the  supremacy  of 
the  French  drama  is  again  indisputable,  many  of 
the  best  plays  are  due  to  collaboration.  Scribe 
and  M.  Legouve  wrote  together  '  Adrienne  Le- 
couvreur'  and  the  '  Bataille  des  Dames.'  MM. 
Meilhac  and  Halevy  were  joint  authors  of  '  Frou- 
frou '  (that  poignant  picture  of  the  disadvantages 

309 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF  COLLABORATION 

of  self-sacrifice)  and  of  the  'Grand  Duchess  of 
Gerolstein  '  (that  bold  and  brilliant  satire  of  im- 
perial misrule).  Emile  Augier,  to  my  mind  the 
most  wholesome  and  the  most  manly  dramatist 
of  our  day,  joined  Jules  Sandeau  in  composing 
the  '  Gendre  de  M.  Poirier,'  the  most  satisfactory 
comedy  of  the  century. 

Scribe  and  Augier  and  Sandeau,  M.  Legouve, 
Meilhac,  and  M.  Halevy,  are  all  men  of  fine  talents 
and  of  varied  accomplishments  in  letters;  they 
are  individually  the  authors  of  many  another 
drama;  but  no  one  of  these  other  pieces  attains 
the  stature  of  the  cooperative  plays  or  even  ap- 
proaches the  standard  thus  set.  Nothing  else  of 
Scribe's  is  as  human  and  as  pathetic  as  '  Adrienne 
Lecouvreur,'  and  nothing  else  of  M.  Legouve's 
is  as  skilful.  Since  the  dissolution  of  the  part- 
nership of  MM.  Meilhac  and  Halevy  they  have 
each  written  alone.  M.  Halevy's  '  Abbe  Constan- 
tin '  is  a  charming  idyl,  and  Meilhac's  '  Decore ' 
is  delicately  humorous;  but  where  is  the  underly- 
ing strength  which  sustains  '  Frou-frou '  ?  where 
is  the  exuberant  comic  force  of  '  Tricoche  et 
Cacolet '  ?  where  is  the  disintegrating  irony  of 
the  '  Belle  Helene '  ?  Here  collaboration  has 
proved  itself.  Here  union  has  produced  work 
finer  and  higher  than  was  apparently  possible  to 
either  author  alone.  More  often  than  not  collab- 
oration seems  accidental,  and  its  results  are  not 

310 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF  COLLABORATION 

the  works  by  which  we  rank  either  of  its 
writers.  We  do  not  think  of  Charles  Dickens 
chiefly  as  the  author  of  'No  Thoroughfare,'  nor 
is  '  No  Thoroughfare '  the  book  by  which  we 
judge  Wilkie  Collins.  But '  Adrienne  Lecouvreur ' 
is  the  finest  play  on  the  list  of  either  Scribe's 
works  or  of  M.  Legouve's,  and  '  Frou-frou '  is 
perhaps  the  most  likely  to  survive  of  all  MM, 
Meilhac  and  Halevy's  varied  dramatic  efforts. 

France  is  the  country  with  the  most  vigorous 
dramatic  literature,  and  France  is  the  country 
where  collaboration  is  the  most  frequent.  The 
two  facts  are  to  be  set  down  together,  without  a 
forced  suggestion  that  either  is  a  consequence  of 
the  other.  But  it  is  to  be  noted  again  that  in 
any  country  where  there  is  a  revival  of  the  drama 
collaboration  is  likely  to  become  common  at 
once.  In  Germany  just  now,  for  example,  there 
is  a  promising  school  of  comedy-writers— and 
they  are  combining  one  with  another.  In  Great 
Britain  and  in  the  United  States  there  are  signs 
of  dramatic  growth;  and  very  obviously  there 
has  been  an  enormous  improvement  in  the  past 
few  years.  A  comparison  of  the  original  plays 
written  in  our  language  twenty-five  years  ago 
with  those  now  so  written  is  most  encouraging. 
It  may  seem  a  little  like  that  circular  argument,— 
which  is  as  dangerous  as  a  circular  saw,— but  I 
venture  to  suggest  that  one  of  the  causes  of 

3«i 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF  COLLABORATION 

immediate  hopefulness  for  the  drama  in  our  lan- 
guage is  the  prevalence  of  collaboration  in  Eng- 
land and  in  America;  for  by  such  partnerships 
the  principles  of  play-making  are  spread  abroad. 
"We  learn  of  our  contemporaries,"  said  Emer- 
son, "what  they  know,  without  effort,  and  al- 
most through  the  pores  of  the  skin."  Now,  a 
collaborator  must  needs  be  the  closest  of  con- 
temporaries. 

With  Charles  Reade,  Tom  Taylor  composed 
'  Masks  and  Faces,'  an  artificial  comedy  of  unde- 
niable effect;  and  with  Mr.  A.  W.  Dubourg  he 
wrote  'New  Men  and  Old  Acres,'  a  comedy  also 
artificial,  but  more  closely  akin  to  modern  life. 
With  Palgrave  Simpson,  Mr.  Herman  Merivale 
prepared  a  moving  romantic  drama,  '  All  for  Her,' 
and  with  Mr.  F.  C.  Grove  he  wrote  a  brilliant 
comedy,  'Forget-me-not.'  To  collaboration 
again  is  due  the  '  Silver  King,'  the  best  of  recent 
English  dramas  of  its  type.  And  collaboration, 
alas!  is  also  to  be  credited  with  the  most  of  the 
latest  machine-made  British  melodramas,  plays 
which  may  bear  the  signatures  of  any  two  of 
half  a  dozen  contemporary  playwrights— which 
reveal  a  most  extraordinary  likeness  one  to  the 
other,  as  though  they  had  each  been  cut  from 
the  same  roll  of  goods  in  lengths  to  suit  the  pur- 
chaser, and  in  which  the  pattern  is  always  a 
variation  of  a  single  theme,  the  revengeful  pur- 

312 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF  COLLABORATION 

suit  of  an  exemplary  good  man  by  an  indefatiga- 
ble bad  man. 

In  America  there  is  also  an  evident  tendency 
toward  cooperation,  as  there  has  been  a  distinct 
improvement  in  the  technic  of  play-writing.  Mr, 
Bronson  Howard  has  told  us  that  he  had  a  silent 
partner  in  revising  his  'Banker's  Daughter,' 
known  in  England  as  the  '  Old  Love  and  the 
New.'  To  the  novice  in  the  theater  the  aid  of 
the  expert  is  invaluable.  When  Mrs,  Hodgson 
Burnett  desired  to  make  a  play  out  of  her  little 
tale  of  '  Esmeralda,'  she  consulted  counsel  learned 
in  the  law  of  dramatic  construction,  Mr.  William 
Gillette,  by  whose  aid  the  comedy  was  written. 
If  the  poetic  drama  has  any  future  on  our  stage, 
it  must  owe  this  in  a  measure  to  collaboration, 
for  the  technic  of  the  theater  is  nowadays  very 
elaborate,  and  few  bards  are  likely  to  master  it 
satisfactorily.  But  if  the  poet  will  frankly  join 
hands  with  the  practical  playwright,  there  is  a 
hopeful  possibility  of  success.  Had  Browning 
taken  advice  before  he  finally  fixed  on  his  action, 
and  while  the  form  was  yet  fluid,  '  A  Blot  in  the 
Scutcheon  '  might  have  been  made  a  great  acting 
play.  It  is  while  a  drama  is  still  malleable  that 
the  aid  of  the  expert  is  invaluable. 

The  assistance  which  Dumas  received  from  his 
frequent  associates  was  not  of  this  kind;  it  was 
not  the  cooperation  of  an  expert  partner,  but 

3>3 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF  COLLABORATION 

rather  that  of  a  useful  apprentice.  The  chief  of 
these  collaborators  was  the  late  Auguste  Maquet, 
with  whom  Dumas  would  block  out  the  plot, 
and  to  whom  he  would  intrust  all  the  toilsome 
detail  of  investigation  and  verification.  Edmond 
About  once  caught  Dumas  red-handed  in  the  very 
act  of  collaboration,  and  from  his  account  it  ap- 
pears that  Maquet  had  set  down  in  black-and- 
white  the  outline  of  the  story  as  they  had  devel- 
oped it  together,  incorporating,  doubtless,  his 
own  suggestions  and  the  result  of  his  historic 
research.  This  outline  was  contained  on  little 
squares  of  paper,  and  each  of  these  little  squares 
Dumas  was  amplifying  into  a  large  sheet  of 
manuscript  in  his  own  fine  handwriting. 

Thackeray  answered  the  accusation  that 
Dumas  did  not  write  all  his  own  works  by  ask- 
ing, "  Does  not  the  chief  cook  have  aides  under 
him  7  Did  not  Rubens's  pupils  paint  on  his 
canvases  ?  "  Then— it  is  in  one  of  the  most 
delightful  passages  of  the  always  delightful 
*  Roundabout  Papers  '—he  declares  that  he  him- 
self would  like  a  competent,  respectable,  and 
rapid  clerk  to  whom  he  might  say,  "  Mr.  Jones, 
if  you  please,  the  archbishop  must  die  this  morn- 
ing in  about  five  pages.  Turn  to  article  '  Dropsy ' 
(or  what  you  will)  in  encyclopedia.  Take  care 
there  are  no  medical  blunders  in  his  death. 
Group  his  daughters,  physicians,  and  chaplains 

3'4 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF  COLLABORATION 

round  him.  In  Wales's  '  London,'  letter  B,  third 
shelf,  you  will  find  an  account  of  Lambeth,  and 
some  prints  of  the  place.  Color  in  with  local 
coloring.  The  daughter  will  come  down  and 
speak  to  her  lover  in  his  wherry  at  Lambeth 
Stairs."  "Jones  (an  intelligent  young  man)  ex- 
amines the  medical,  historical,  topographical 
books  necessary;  his  chief  points  out  to  him  in 
Jeremy  Taylor  (fol.  London,  MDCLV)  a  few 
remarks  such  as  might  befit  a  dear  old  archbishop 
departing  this  life.  When  I  come  back  to  dress 
for  dinner  the  archbishop  is  dead  on  my  table  in 
five  pages,— medicine,  topography,  theology,  all 
right,— and  Jones  has  gone  home  to  his  family 
some  hours."  This  was  Thackeray's  whimsical 
suggestion;  but  if  he  had  ventured  to  adopt  it 
himself,  I  fear  we  should  have  been  able  to  dis- 
tinguish the  prentice  hand  from  the  fine  round 
sweep  of  the  master. 

This  paper  is,  perhaps,  rather  a  consideration 
of  the  principle  of  collaboration  than  an  explana- 
tion of  its  methods.  To  point  out  the  depart- 
ments of  literature  in  which  collaboration  may 
be  of  advantage  and  to  indicate  its  more  apparent 
limitations  have  been  my  objects,  and  I  have 
postponed  as  long  as  I  could  any  attempt  to 
explain  "  how  it  is  done."  Such  an  explanation 
is  at  best  but  a  doubtful  possibility. 

Perhaps  the  first  requisite  is  a  sympathy  be- 

^^5 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF  COLLABORATION 

tween  the  two  partners  not  sufficient  to  make 
them  survey  life  from  the  same  point  of  view, 
but  yet  enough  to  make  them  respect  each 
other's  suggestions  and  be  prepared  to  accept 
them.  There  is  needed  in  both  openness  of 
mind  as  well  as  alertness,  an  ability  to  take  as 
well  as  to  give,  a  willingness  to  put  yourself  in 
his  place  and  to  look  at  the  world  from  his  stand- 
point. Probably  it  is  best  that  the  two  authors 
shall  not  be  too  much  alike  in  temperament. 
Edmond  and  Jules  de  Goncourt,  for  example, 
although  not  twins,  thought  alike  on  most  sub- 
jects; and  so  close  was  their  identity  of  cerebra- 
tion that  when  they  were  sitting  at  the  same 
table  at  work  on  the  same  book,  they  sometimes 
wrote  almost  the  same  sentence  at  the  same 
moment.  This  is  collaboration  carried  to  an 
abnormal  and  unwholesome  extreme;  and  there 
is  much  that  is  morbid  and  much  that  is  forced 
in  the  books  the  Goncourts  composed  together. 

Collaboration  may  once  more  be  likened  to 
matrimony,  and  we  may  consider  MM.  Erck- 
mann-Chatrian  and  Messrs.  Besant  and  Rice  as 
monogamists,  while  Scribe  and  Labiche,  who 
were  ready  to  collaborate  at  large,  are  polyga- 
mists.  In  marriage  husband  and  wife  are  one, 
and  that  is  not  a  happy  union  when  either  in- 
quires as  to  which  one  it  is:  the  unity  should  be 
so  complete  that  the  will  of  each  is  merged  in 

3i6 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF  COLLABORATION 

that  of  the  other.  So  it  should  be  in  a  literary 
partnership.  Respect  for  each  other,  mutual 
esteem,  is,  perhaps,  the  first  requisite  for  collab- 
oration, as  for  matrimony;  and  good  temper  is 
assuredly  the  second. 

In  discussing  the  practice  of  collaboration  with 
that  passed  master  of  the  art  Sir  Walter  Besant, 
he  declared  to  me  that  it  was  absolutely  essential 
that  one  of  the  two  partners  should  be  the  head 
of  the  firm.  He  did  not  tell  me  who  was  the 
head  of  the  firm  of  Besant  and  Rice,  and  I  have 
no  direct  testimony  to  offer  in  support  of  my 
belief  that  the  dominant  member  was  Sir  Walter 
himself;  but  there  is  a  plenty  of  circumstantial 
evidence  to  that  effect,  and,  as  Thoreau  says, 
"  some  circumstantial  evidence  is  very  strong— 
as  when  you  find  a  trout  in  the  milk." 

What  Sir  Walter  Besant  meant,  1  take  it,  was 
that  there  must  be  a  unity  of  impulse  so  that  the 
resulting  product  shall  seem  the  outcome  of  a 
single  controlling  mind.  This  may  be  attained 
by  the  domination  of  one  partner,  no  doubt,  as 
when  Dumas  availed  himself  of  the  aid  of  Ma- 
quet;  but  it  can  be  the  result  also  of  an  harmoni- 
ous equality,  as  when  Meilhac  and  M.  Halevy 
were  writing  together.  In  collaboration  as  in 
matrimony,  again,  it  is  well  when  the  influence 
of  the  masculine  element  does  not  wholly  over- 
power the  feminine. 

317 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF  COLLABORATION 

As  there  are  households  where  husband  and 
wife  fight  like  cat  and  dog,  and  where  marriage 
ends  in  divorce,  so  there  are  literary  partnerships 
which  are  dissolved  in  acrimony  and  anger. 
Alexandre  Dumas  fits  has  lent  his  strength  to 
the  authors  of  the  '  Supplice  d'une  Femme,' '  He- 
loise  Paranquet,'  and  the  'Danicheff,'  and  there 
followed  bad  feelings  and  high  words.  Warned 
by  this  bitter  experience,  Dumas  is  said  to  have 
answered  a  request  to  collaborate  with  the  query, 
"  Why  should  I  wish  to  quarrel  with  you }  " 
But  Dumas  was  a  bad  collaborator,  I  fancy,  de- 
spite his  skill  and  his  strength.  He  was  like  the 
powerful  ally  a  weak  country  sometimes  calls  in 
to  its  own  undoing.  Yet  in  his  case  the  usual 
cause  of  disagreement  between  collaborators 
was  lacking,  for  the  plays  succeeded  which  he 
recast  and  stamped  with  his  own  image  and 
superscription.  In  general  it  is  when  the  work 
fails  that  the  collaborators  fall  out.  Racine  made 
an  epigram  against  the  two  now  forgotten 
authors  of  a  now  forgotten  tragedy,  that  each 
claimed  it  before  it  was  produced  and  both  re- 
nounced it  after  it  had  been  acted. 

If  I  may  be  allowed  to  offer  myself  as  a  wit- 
ness, I  shall  testify  to  the  advantage  of  a  literary 
partnership  which  halves  the  labor  of  the  task 
and  doubles  the  pleasure.  It  may  be  that  I  have 
been  exceptionally  skilful  in  choosing  my  allies 

318 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF  COLLABORATION 

or  exceptionally  fortunate  in  them,  but  I  can 
declare  unhesitatingly  that  I  have  never  had  a 
hard  word  with  a  collaborator  while  our  work 
was  in  hand  and  never  a  bitter  word  with  him 
afterward.  My  collaborators  have  always  been 
my  friends  before  and  they  have  always  remained 
my  friends  after.  Sometimes  our  literary  part- 
nership was  the  unpremeditated  outcome  of  a 
friendly  chat  in  the  course  of  which  we  chanced 
upon  a  subject,  and  in  sport  developed  it  until 
unexpectedly  it  seemed  promising  enough  to  be 
worthy  of  artistic  consideration.  Such  a  subject 
belonged  to  both  of  us,  and  had  best  be  treated 
by  both  together.  There  was  no  dispute  as  to 
our  respective  shares  in  the  result  of  our  joint 
labors,  because  we  could  not  ourselves  even 
guess  what  each  had  done  when  both  had  been 
at  work  together.  As  Augier  said  in  the  preface 
to  the  '  Lionnes  Pauvres,'  which  he  wrote  with 
Edouard  Foussier,  we  must  follow  the  example 
of  "  the  married  people  who  say  one  to  the  other, 
'your  son.' " 

I  have  collaborated  in  writing  stories,  in  mak- 
ing plays,  and  in  editing  books.  Sometimes  I 
may  have  thought  that  I  did  more  than  my  share, 
and  sometimes  I  knew  that  I  did  less  than  I 
should,  but  always  there  was  harmony,  and  never 
did  either  of  us  seek  to  assert  a  mastery.  How- 
ever done,  and  by  whichever  of  the  two,  the 

}^9 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF  COLLABORATION 

subject  was  always  thoroughly  discussed  be- 
tween us ;  it  was  turned  over  and  over  and  upside 
down  and  inside  out;  it  was  considered  from  all 
possible  points  of  view  and  in  every  stage  of 
development.  When  a  final  choice  was  made 
of  what  seemed  to  us  best,  the  mere  putting  on 
paper  was  wholly  secondary.  I  have  written  a 
play  of  which  I  prepared  the  dialogue  of  one  act 
and  my  associate  prepared  that  of  the  next;  I 
have  written  a  play  in  which  I  wrote  the  scenes 
in  which  certain  characters  appeared  and  my  ally 
wrote  those  in  which  certain  other  characters 
appeared;  I  have  written  a  short-story  in  two 
chapters  of  which  one  was  in  my  autograph  and 
the  other  in  my  partner's :  but  none  the  less  was 
he  the  half-author  of  the  portions  I  set  on  paper, 
and  none  the  less  was  I  the  half-author  of  the 
portions  he  set  on  paper. 

Probably  the  most  profitable  method  is  that 
of  alternate  development;  certainly  it  is  for  a 
drama.  After  the  subject  begins  to  take  form, 
A  makes  out  a  tentative  sequence  of  scenes;  and 
this,  after  several  talks,  B  fills  up  into  an  outline 
of  the  story.  Slowly,  and  after  careful  consulta- 
tion, A  elaborates  this  into  a  detailed  scenario  in 
which  every  character  is  set  forth,  every  entrance 
and  every  exit,  v/ith  the  reasons  for  them,  every 
scene  and  every  effect— in  fact,  everything  except 
the  words  to  be  spoken.     Then   B  takes  this 

320 


THE  ART  AND  MYSTERY  OF  COLLABORATION 

scenario,  and  from  it  he  writes  a  first  rough  draft 
of  the  play  itself,  complete  in  dialogue  and  in 
"business."  This  rough  draft  A  revises,  and 
rewrites  where  need  be.  Then  it  goes  to  the 
copyist;  and  when  the  clean  type-written  manu- 
script returns  both  A  and  B  go  over  it  again  and 
again,  pointing  and  polishing,  until  each  is  satis- 
fied with  their  labor  in  common.  Perhaps  the 
drama  is  the  only  form  of  literature  in  which  so 
painstaking  a  process  would  be  advantageous,  or 
in  which  it  would  be  advisable  even;  but  of  a 
play  the  structure  can  hardly  be  too  careful  or 
too  precise,  nor  can  the  dialogue  be  too  compact 
or  too  polished. 

"I  am  no  pickpurse  of  another's  wit,"  as  Sir 
Philip  Sidney  boasts,  but  I  cannot  forego  the 
malign  pleasure  of  quoting,  in  conclusion,  Mr. 
Andrew  Lang's  insidious  suggestion  to  "  young 
men  entering  on  the  life  of  letters."  He  advises 
them  "to  find  an  ingenious  and  industrious  and 
successful  partner,  stick  to  him,  never  quarrel 
with  him,  and  do  not  survive  him," 
(1890) 


321 


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